Note: back in October 2021, I challenged myself to use the Inktober prompts to create one black-and-white piece of art each day. I would then learn how to vectorize them in Adobe Illustrator and make some cool digital art. Two things happened in the meantime: 1) Illustrator’s learning curve proved steeper than I could find time or focus for, and 2) I started writing pieces alongside them as a writing exercise. INKTHINK is a series combining the two for the next 31 days.

Among the many disappointments at the end of the Game of Thrones TV series, one of the quirkier ones is how much ground was laid for a three-eyed raven that never quite paid off. Time and time again we were given dark, ominous shots of this raven, urged to believe it was something of great importance, something that would actually shift the narrative ground beneath us. Perhaps they eventually realized three-eyed ravens were not as cool as fire-breathing dragons.

Stepping into the waters of A Wiki of Fire and Ice only confused me further, so I will stick to what I initially took the raven to be: something that could see the past, the present, and the future. Visually, it made sense. But two and a half years after the wet fart of a series conclusion, I think of the three-eyed raven less as a metaphor for the story and far more as a reminder of how dangerous it is to get hung up on dancing in time. Being able to see the past, the present, and the future could lead to some pretty cool stories, maybe even some groundbreaking realizations. But it’s one thing to see something. It’s another to do something about it. It’s another thing entirely to get other people to do something about it, especially when you’ve told them that particular thing came to you from a three-eyed raven. We’ve seen these last two years that many people in our country will stick to their own facts to fit their own narrative, of which serves the community they believe themselves to be part of. There are many three-eyed ravens fluttering about these days. No wonder the horizon can sometimes look so perilous.

What I prefer, instead, is the four-eyed raven. Just a regular old raven with some glasses, admitting to their myopia and recognizing the need for some corrective vision lens to help them see the situation more clearly. And then when someone comes to them with their own observations, they’re willing to look at another vision and interpret it through their own lens again. That’s all meaning-making is. You remain flexible so that different truths may help you better understand the world. It’s a constant, ever-shifting process. And when you get lost in the weeds, you can do that thing birds love to do: zoom out and fly over it all.

Note: back in October 2021, I challenged myself to use the Inktober prompts to create one black-and-white piece of art each day. I would then learn how to vectorize them in Adobe Illustrator and make some cool digital art. Two things happened in the meantime: 1) Illustrator’s learning curve proved steeper than I could find time or focus for, and 2) I started writing pieces alongside them as a writing exercise. INKTHINK is a series combining the two for the next 31 days.

I have rarely met a knot that didn’t make me anxious. I could appreciate them – the way they’d tie a boat securely to the dock, the way they’d hold a tent up in high winds, the way they’d represent a promise of something difficult to unravel – but I had no idea how to make them. And the thing about learning how to do a knot is you have to watch it being done while being told how to do it at the same time. Any Deaf person knows this is a fool’s errand. Something will get lost in translation. You will think it can’t be much different than tying your own shoes and yet every single time you make a knot, you feel the give. It’s not something to be trusted. 

But there is a knot I can entertain: the Triquetra – otherwise known as the Trinity Knot. It’s a Celtic Irish symbol I’ve been drawn to before I ever had an inkling of family heritage tying back (see what I did there?) to the culture. Drawing this knot is difficult for the very reason that makes it so captivating: there is no beginning or end. There are only eternal curves. In other words: it’s Life as we’ll come to accept it. 

There’s also a Celtic conviction – at least according to a questionable Google search – that things of significance in this world come in threes.  I think of triangles and how I’ve been told my whole life they’re the strongest structure to build with – a fact that did not keep the balsa wood bridge I built in my high school architecture class from collapsing under an embarrassing low amount  of pressure. I think about how the best passing in soccer often occurs when players form an ever-shifting triangle wherever they are on the field, always allowing the teammate with the ball at least two quick options to go to. I think about my wife and our newly-2-year-old daughter and the unmistakable power of the firstborn. You start with two people. And then you make a third. And everything with that child is a series of firsts, the bond burnished through the experiences you survive and build upon. 

Recently, in the third and final test for my bilingual certification, I did an ASL (American Sign Language) interview. The process is deceptively simple: you chat with an interviewer over 5 questions and 20 minutes, using as much ASL grammar and structure as you comfortably can. But the hardest part of the test is everything before and after. Very few Deaf people sign in strict ASL; we’re the accumulation of all our experiences and exposures to language, especially English (or any other dominant speaking language). Our individual language style is one of survival, a way to say, “I got to this point in my life by signing just like this.” And yet the results are scored by someone not in the room, someone who reviews this recorded interview video that flattens your 3D conversation. You can’t help but feel like the score – one way or another – is some indictment of your own Deaf identity. 

I say this because as I was practicing for the test, thinking through signs I’d seen hundreds of times but didn’t quite feel comfortable with on my own, I ran into one unexpected roadblock: lists. When you’re describing a list of things in ASL – in the air, not through spoken words – you will use your non-dominant hand to keep track of them. To me, the easiest number to work with is 3. It feels sturdy and true. Like the triangles that build everything powerful and imposing around you. When you extend the list to four, the natural instinct is to raise the ring finger, which is awkward as hell. It doesn’t feel right. Unless you’re really flexible, that ring finger will be barely rising, like a deflating tube balloon, a shy digit eager to duck out of the exercise altogether. What you’re supposed to do is fold in the thumb and raise four fingers. But now your brain has to shuffle the list one finger over. And then if you decide to extend the list to 5, you reshuffle a finger over in the opposite direction, with your thumb becoming the top of the list.

At some point, it feels like 3 is where you should stop. 

(Sidebar: this led me, a childhood Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles megafan to wonder: just how would these four dudes say “I love you” in ASL? Just hold their hands up, all fingers extended? Squeeze two green balls between their two fingers? Would it mean that “hello” and “I love you” and “goodbye” are all the same sentiment and this is why they have commitment issues?)

Coming back to the Celtic conviction of threes: it can represent many things: birth, life, and death; earth, sea, and sky; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But there’s one particular triad that’s slapped me around in adulthood and parenthood alike: the past, present, and future. 

As a parent, there is no way to unhook the curves in the Trinity Knot of your life. Every decision you make about your child runs through all three time loops all at once. When you wonder just how many salty snacks is enough before Nabisco signs them to an endorsement deal. When you fret whether to rock them or let them cry it out. When you try to determine how much money to set in a college fund when you can’t even imagine what college will look like in this crazy world 16 years down the line. In each decision you will consider your past as a child, and as an adult you will consider the impact in the present moment. You will wonder, far more than you want to admit, if you’ve irreparably screwed up your child. All these three timelines will bleed into each other like someone placing a tissue paper collage over your brain, one overlapping layer at a time.

As an adult, you’re going to constantly be fidgeting with your identity in every idle and chaotic moment. You’re going to be rewriting your past, reframing every embarrassing high school moment (God, they were many) and decision you swerved away from making, trying to rewire everything so the person you are today makes a little bit more sense. And then you’re gonna look ahead, into the great unknown, and wonder just what is yet to come. This is all normal. This is all what makes life wonderful and difficult and interesting and unique. I love my animals, but I do not believe they have these trinity loops running through their heads. Perhaps that’s why you don’t see substance addiction and therapy in the Animal Kingdom. 

One day I will learn these handy knots. I’ll secure a few boats and assure the structure of some tents (especially so my family doesn’t assume I’m as clueless as I sometimes look). Perhaps I’ll even help my daughters build an especially invulnerable balsa wood bridge, vicariously living through their project, shaking my fist at the architecture gods and their impossible standards. But until then, I’ll be okay with stopping at 3. Three is more than enough. Three eternal loops is a life worth examining. And a life examined is one worth living. 

Note: back in October 2021, I challenged myself to use the Inktober prompts to create one black-and-white piece of art each day. I would then learn how to vectorize them in Adobe Illustrator and make some cool digital art. Two things happened in the meantime: 1) Illustrator’s learning curve proved steeper than I could find time or focus for, and 2) I started writing pieces alongside them as a writing exercise. INKTHINK is a series combining the two for the next 31 days.

You may be familiar with the Freshman 15. My first year of college, through a combination of sleep deprivation, overwork, and the toxic availability of all the foods at the cafeteria, I gained nearly 40 pounds. I didn’t really pick up on it first. Being 6’2”, it’s easy for that extra weight to spread throughout your body, and for muscles to nudge up against fat in such a way that almost looks like tone (but is, in fact, just muscle against a bigger wall of fat than you realize). So I tried different things. I worked out. I tried to not eat everything in the cafeteria. I flipped through ad after ad of overpriced fashion to find workout ideas in Men’s Health magazines. But college life made it difficult and it wasn’t until after I graduated that I actually learned how calories worked. From there, my focus became one both solemn and silly: I wanted to be the most efficient version of myself. My rationale? One day I would have kids, and I did not want to be sucking wind chasing them all over the house, falling off of tree forts, and generally finding new ways to get hurt in the safest of situations. And, of course, there was an element of vanity in that I wanted to look better in pictures.

I then looked for shortcuts. I went to a climbing gym, thinking a random night of bouldering would get me closer to a Spiderman physique (it did not). I went to CrossFit for a month, thinking it would transform me with some kind of natural steroids (I only got debilitating soreness). I dabbled in a little bit of everything, not realizing until much, much later in life that everything generally works, but the only things that truly work are the ones you are consistent with (a very annoying truth). So I futzed around a lot, fooling myself of progress over and over again. It wasn’t until I read Tim Ferris’ 4-Hour Body, a book full of ideas for the shortcut-minded like myself, that I stumbled upon something that didn’t necessarily make me any leaner, but made me feel far more efficient: Total Immersion.

The gist of the program, developed by Terry McLaughlin, is that your aim should always be to be as efficient a swimming vessel as possible. You’re not generating power. You’re making yourself as sleek and aerodynamic as possible so that there’s little power needed. This is how you go far. This is how you do laps upon laps and somehow emerge energized rather than exhausted. It feels counterintuitive, like something a sloth would come up with. Like someone was going to eventually tell me to just lay and float in the water because we’re all gonna die anyways.

But after I got over my initial skepticism, I gave it a shot. And I learned very quickly why my swimming took so much out of me; why I’d feel my muscles working, but in a way that felt deeply inefficient. For most of my life, my body was not balanced in the water. My feet would often sink behind me, creating more drag, and I’d have to madly pull with my arms, stroke after stroke, only able to complete a lap or two at a time before stopping. With Total Immersion, I learned to reach for the floor of the pool. Again, it felt counterintuitive, but it miraculously evened out my body and the slightest, gentlest strokes suddenly had me moving with the steady, seamless pace of a shark through the water. It felt like a magic trick. It still does.

Nowhere else do I feel as efficient a vessel as the pool. No matter how many creaks or aches I may have in my body, there’s always the chance to glide with a grace I can’t find elsewhere. There’s just something special about holding your arms together between your ears, looking down, and pushing off the wall as you cut through the water with frictionless motion. You soar over the bottom of the pool like an aquatic ghost. Whenever I would swim at the local YMCA, I’d look at the lanes next to me and see people of all shapes and sizes doing their own thing. There would always be someone who looked a little beaten down by life, who found a kind of cathartic, necessary relief in a place that did not punish them for the things they did or did not do. Here, they could float. They could glide. They could dream of smoother journeys and healthier futures. They could just be.

And that’s the thing. So much of efficiency comes from not fighting the environment, but moving smoothly with it. Through recognizing when you’re doing too much and thinking about how you can be like Terry McLaughlin, gliding through the water, free as an underwater bird, always searching while always feeling at home.

Note: back in October 2021, I challenged myself to use the Inktober prompts to create one black-and-white piece of art each day. I would then learn how to vectorize them in Adobe Illustrator and make some cool digital art. Two things happened in the meantime: 1) Illustrator’s learning curve proved steeper than I could find time or focus for, and 2) I started writing pieces alongside them as a writing exercise. INKTHINK is a series combining the two for the next 31 days.

I spent most of my childhood enthralled by the possibilities of space. In grade school, my answer to any “What do you want to be when you grow up?” was always, unmistakably, an astronaut. Perhaps it was Tom Hanks’ charm in Apollo 13 or seeing that Lieutenant Dan not only grew some legs back but almost made it into the same shuttle himself. Perhaps it was just the sheer enormity of it. That space was some statue you’d admire and could never, ever wrap your arms around. In 8th grade Science, I had to do a group project on planets that quickly became a solo project. The other three members of the group quickly realized how little motivation I needed to do research about something I was already deeply intrigued by. So they let me do my thing. It was only at the end, when teacher gave me a giant, ugly D- – itself a practical joke to remind me of the importance of it being a GROUP project – that I realized you could never go that far up in the sky without a team. You had to trust people. You also had to accept you might not make it back.

While space maintained its hold on me, I found myself more and more lured into the mysteries of the deep. The San Mariana Trench, which I first read about it in Steve Alten’s Meg, waterlogged my daydreams. The fact an inverse Mt. Everest existed below the surface of the Pacific Ocean waves felt more tangible than the vastness of space. It also felt more terrifying. There, down below, you could not only run into the 80% of the ocean and its creatures we had yet to discover, but you could also, with one false move – one slight crack in the windshield – succumb to the pressure of the deep ocean and no longer exist. You could be crushed so fast no one would know.

Over the years, James Cameron’s passion for the deep sea only drew out mine even further. I’m still kinda mad at him for being too busy with blue cat people to adapt the best Sports Illustrated story ever. But if the man who created some of the biggest, most successful movies of all time could spend so much of his career in ever-shrinking, deeper-diving submersibles, then there had to be something he knew we didn’t. After all, the man had made an entire career out of being betted against and winning each and every time.

Recently, I found out one of my co-workers has a bone-deep phobia of whales. As I inquired further, her face grew with embarrassment, shaking it off with, “I read too much and had no friends”, a phrase meant to signify isolation but instead pulled the most empathetic of strings. I knew what she was talking about. Left to our own devices, we could read our way to a despair we didn’t yet know how to rise beyond. “But they’re so big and there’s so many of them and you know how big the ocean has to be to fit all of them?” I could only smile. “But that’s why I find them so cool,” I said. “Terrifying, yes, but also really cool.” I theorized out loud – a move I’d later learn to be a big mistake – that perhaps her phobia came from seeing something so big in a place in which you were so immobile, the water resisting your every move and reaction. “Stop,” she pleaded, embarrassed at the can of deep-sea worms she had given daylight. We agreed to only talk about beluga whales. They are small enough to comfortably think about.

Over the summer, NASA released the results of a $5 billion project over two decades in the making: the most detailed photos of space ever, taken by the new James Webb Space Telescope. Only the size of our own viewing devices could limit the awe contained with each photo released. And only just last month, NASA researchers found the first exoplanet with the Webb Telescope, a planet within 99% the size of Earth. How crazy is that, to know there’s a same-sized planet circling a star millions and millions of miles away, some parallel universe we’ll always be curious about? Another question: if we the Earth is 70% ocean and we haven’t discovered 80% of it, that would mean we have over half the planet unexplored. Completely off the grid. Unmapped and unknown. Why can’t we develop a Sea Telescope of sorts, an inverse version of the James Webb variety?

What I’ve ultimately grown to understand is how the lack of further exploration of our oceans mirrors our collective disinterest in saving the planet. More specifically: the collective disinterest of the wealthy elite – those with the power to make and avoid decisions that affect us all. There is so much to explore and, within them, so many possible solutions and realizations we need to stumble upon. You don’t need carbon-vomiting rockets to do it. You just need coordination and deep pockets. In other words: we may never know.

I drew this picture to draw attention to the parallels of both explorers. One for deep space, the other for the deep sea (at least until the pressure becomes too much for a suit to absorb). In many ways, they feel like two sides of a coin. They both offer death-defying exploration. They both captivate the imaginations of the youth in a way few things do. They both look cool as shit. But there is so much focus on space and far-off dreams of ghost colonies we’ll never build that I wish we could flip the coin over and see the other side, like we’ve been playing with tracing paper this whole time and people need to see the original. Wonder is a powerful thing. If only we could bottle it up in ways that weren’t meant for profit but rather the pursuit of a better future within our current home.

Note: back in October 2021, I challenged myself to use the Inktober prompts to create one black-and-white piece of art each day. I would then learn how to vectorize them in Adobe Illustrator and make some cool digital art. Two things happened in the meantime: 1) Illustrator’s learning curve proved steeper than I could find time or focus for, and 2) I started writing pieces alongside them as a writing exercise. INKTHINK is a series combining the two for the next 31 days.

I confess I don’t know much about crystals. I use the term ‘crystallize’ with far more confidence than I have in understanding how the process actually works. When I started sketching out this picture, I thought about the gift of time. When my daughter was born, I assumed my writing time would evaporate, the giant Mop of Time just dabbing and sweeping and soaking up everything I once had. I gave myself the first two months of her life to just be as present as possible. To notice the little details of growth. To be nurturing. To talk back every single time she tried talking to me. And it worked, for a while. Then I became antsy.

Once my paternity leave ended and I got back into the flow of work, I found time to be even more lacking. I knew that as soon as I got home I’d have to take the baby for a walk so my wife could have a break and/or do some freelance work. What I didn’t see coming is just how valuable those walks would become to my writing process. My daughter loved being outside. She also, at this point, didn’t say much beyond a few babbles here and there, taking it all in with her wide, sleepy eyes. Often, she’d fall asleep. Always, she gave me the time to be bored so I could let my creative mind wonder.

It started with a few key story breakthroughs for a screenplay I had written ten months prior. A screenplay in which I, already feeling like a completely different person, struggled to ascertain any clear path forward towards a second draft. I knew I wanted it to better. Wanted it to be deeper. I just didn’t know quite how. But after that first week of walking, I had several ideas to play with logged in my phone’s Notes. I went from begrudgingly going through these walks to absolutely giddy at the idea of them each day. What better combo than to glance at our beautiful, growing baby while letting my mind crystalize all these long-fomenting ideas?

For some, crystals may represent perfection. Hardness. Class. For me? They represent the results of letting the mind wander and make connections. They represent allowing myself the time to be bored, to resist the ever-intrusive world begging for each nanosecond of my attention.

I said before I don’t know much about crystals. So I decided to use Google and try and get a sense of how they’re born. And surprise of all surprises: it eerily mirrors the writing process. Crystallization is a signifier of a process from chaos to perfection. Well, well, well. The nucleus of the crystal is formed, then it gains size on the outside, growing outward, the final process one of termination as growth seizes. The writing I’ve felt best about is the one that has a beating, Arthur’s Round Table center to it and everything is built out from within. The details ooze from what began as the emotional truth at the heart of the story. That ooze goes out in many different ways, building layer upon layer on the surface, before finally settling into its final form. The last part of the process – the process of termination – is just like editing. We kill our darlings. We thank them for their place in the creative process. Sometimes we find them a new home, a running document for orphans. And then we shut the door on the piece, urging it out into a world we cannot control the response of.

They are our crystals, ready to catch some light.