Nerdy Athleticism

I resisted the urge to start my own blog for approximately 25 months. I first toyed with the idea when a couple of my boys from Temple University started their own. I knew that I had an eclectic voice that could make you run a host of emotions all before you decide whether or not you believed a word I said. I'm a poet, so writing is what I breathe, I think in prose...I suppose that in my mind the world is a beautiful rhyme, with metric balances and atmospheric alliterations, metallic metaphors and simple similes that have us all snapping in our souls. So why wouldn't I, being a poet, try to bring out the poetry of everyday life to all those sponges who seek to soak up all that is conceptually beautiful? It's called second-guessing and procrastination. Two bad things to develop as habits. The former I dabble in every now and then (except when choosing a restaurant, i swim in the ocean of second-guessing, Yelp has helped me ease the tension though) and the latter I've been known to do, especially when it came to writing papers in undergrad.

So, here we are...on the blog of yours truly, a blog that has a weird title, a post that has a title that makes one wonder where I'm going with this...

I guess I'll use this time to explain a little bit about the title of this blog. I'm a kinesthetic, energetic, cool guy. I know, it doesn't make sense, but it's true. I can do nothing and need to do something in my nothingness to feel like I can take the nothing that I'm doing. For instance, as I sit in meetings my mind sprints to other places like relay races from HS track & field, open-mics, or just a kitchen with more gadgets than an iron chef kitchen, while my mind races I'll use whatever's in my vicinity to keep my hands occupied, tossing a clementine right to left under the table so that it is barely noticeable. In order for me to get through a meeting I need to be doing all of that as well as taking notes, otherwise I'll go crazy...I have a Bobby's World/Scrubs sort of mind, a humor that is some weird mix between Dave Chappelle, Will Ferrell, The Office and Kevin Hart...i know, wow...

Back to the subject: the first part of the title Urban Nomad is literally what I began to call myself. I've lost count of how many times I've moved since I first left the next at the glorious age of 18. I'm approaching or may have surpassed 20. I'm being totally serious. It sounds funny, like an embellishment of some sort, but literally between the year 2003 and 2004 I moved a total of 7 times, yup, 7. I've lived all over Philly, numerous places in Brooklyn, I've even lived in Queens (I know I'm saying it like it's some far away place, but I'm a brooklyn dude, born, raised, left during hs and college, and returned, I've been teaching in brooklyn for three years now)...So, Urban Nomad is fitting. I'll use this blog as a time to chronicle (retroactively of course) some of my crazy journeys throughout the urban terrain.

The second part of my title comes from a poem that I've been working on as I ride the L train to and fro work. I live on my iPhone. My lady gets annoyed at how much I use it, I sleep next to it at times. Being the distractible, kinesthetic, energetic, cool guy that I am, I need something in my hands to keep me occupied so that I don't go crazy, the iPhone is that something. I will not use this time to sing the praises of it's superiority over devices that some may call subpar like the Blackberry, the MyTouch or the G1, I'm just simply pointing out how much I use my iPhone...

Anyway here is an excerpt from the poem that remains untitled at the moment where the term Dance the Tangent comes from:

"...I dance the tangent. Salsa my way out of the subject of the moment
and sway my hips to the memory that tickles my fancy. Breakdance under the
strobe light of childhood memories, pop n lock to the hiphop of hopskotch on the
block in Bed-Stuy, two-step to the smell of fried chicken and WWRL, Christian AM
station that my momma blasted from her kitchen radio. I live in and out of the
moment. Staring at the saturated clouds above me, remembering the salty
taste of polluted urban rain..."

I haven't quite worked out what this post will focus on fully, I love that there are blogs dedicated to things from travel to newly weds, but I can't call this a travel blog, or a Christian blog, it's an anomaly, an exploration of things that are beautiful, ugly, challenging, weird, humorous. It's a journey through the malaise of a man trying to stay sane as he grapples with the scruples he professes, the desire to be a great father (to my four-year old), son, friend, boo, teacher, worshipper and leader.

The poem that birthed the term Dance the tangent literally begins with the affirmation that I'm a nerd and an athlete..."i grab onto literary elements like batons/doing stick passes for a relay of rhetoric to students of life..."

Stick! Follow Me!