I Has Been Quoted

I noticed a sudden surge of hits to the post about the Birmingham Museum of Art, and I got curious.  It seemed they were coming from Facebook of all places.  (No.  I can't track you.  I'm not the Government.  And hi, Government.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.  Move along.  I can, however, see where my visitors come from through Feedjit, scrolling down the bottom of the page to the right...)  Anyhoo, I started wondering if maybe there was some connection between the flood (more like tidal wave for me here in my quiet corner of the e-verse) and the museum, so I looked on their FB page.  Look what I found!  Awww.  Isn't this sweet?  Much love to them for the link.  They're fabulous.  People should give them gold by the boatload.  They're absolutely worth it.

Salt on My Tail

If you don't know the old wives' tale about how to catch a bird, you might need to look it up.  Otherwise...well...the title of this one's just weird, isn't it?  (by me, today)

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Salt on My Tail

Free again on wide strong wings
and you won’t ever catch me
Hi-lo-ho-ho all you like
Coax low and sweet
hold the lure tempting
in your outstretched hands

But I’m no tassel-gentle
I’ve slipped those jesses
torn away that hood
and now my eyes
are full of nothing but sky

So if you’re determined
all I can say is
Beware the talons
be smart - be fast
I hope to God you’re nimble
because getting the salt on my tail
when I’ve no plans to land at all
is going to be something of a gamble

The Unexpected Open Spaces

I find myself in totally clear waters for the first time in too long to remember.  There is nothing holding me, no ancient anchors I'm dragging behind me, no heavy chains from the past, no attachments of any kind.  Even a passing fancy I had sort of been looking at, a shiny object that had caught my eye, has fallen away once I really stopped to examine it closely. It's all gone now.

And that is all good to me.

That may not make a lot of sense from the outside looking in, and I am quite aware that it may sound horribly cold and callous.  It's not that I always want to be alone; I don't.  I truly don't.  This unexpected feeling of freedom from all that, though, the feeling of being on an even-keel, is wonderful.  I feel that I can trust my judgments because the past isn't clouding them.  I feel that I can look forward to the future because there isn't any anticipation of something ridiculous in them, something I know is less than the best, less than what I need and deserve.  There is just peacefulness.

Now, I can open out the wings I've kept folded inside me for so long and glide again in these unexpectedly open and bright, cold, clear skies.  I do not know that I will ever find another to share this joy with me.  Right now, I am beyond the caring.  Just this is good.  Just this is better than I've had in a long, long time.

Free At Last

Today I went back to Moundville for the first time since I was there with D.  I had been planning to go for a long time, but since I was passing through on my way back from Birmingham, I decided to stop there and put that ghost to rest.

The air was cool and brilliantly sunny, just like that day so long ago, and when I pulled in and drove slowly around the circle, I expected the memories to jump up and assault me.  I walked through the paths and the museum.  I sat at the same picnic table and watched a barge push its load of coal down the muddy river.

He wasn't there.  Whatever spirits walk there, D. isn't one of them for me anymore.

It was a magnificent relief, especially after the last trip I made to State.  I think I'm free.  As I sat on the bench and felt the sunshine warming my shoulders, I watched the birds soaring.  I felt like them.  I like it.  It's a feeling I intend to get used to.

Concert Videography and the Golden Rule

Last night as I was watching the Punch Brothers show in Birmingham, I suddenly became aware of this little white-haired lady sitting on the front row holding up an iPhone filming the whole thing.  The incongruity of that stunned me for a moment, and then it made me irritated.  There had been, of course, the requisite announcement at the beginning of the performance telling people not to take pictures or record the show in any way.  Now here was this person blatantly sitting there recording away in front of God and country.  Is this where all those videos on YouTube come from?  Somebody's little old Mawmaw?

I don't know why people do that.  I don't know why they just assume it's "okay" unless somebody makes them stop.  It's not.

First of all, I think it's a distraction to the performers if they can see it, and unless that was Thile's sweet little grandma filming her own true bebe up there, they could see her and knew somebody was just as disrespectful to them as could be.  I know as performers they probably develop a thick skin to this sort of thing, but really, does anybody ever get over being shown disrespect?  I am a classroom teacher.  Every day, I stand before an "audience" and deal with varying forms of attention and inattention, respect and disrespect, and I can tell you that even though some of the bad is expected, it never quite gets "okay."

Second, it's a symptom of a larger whole in society to me.  If you're willing to ignore somebody's wishes not to record them in a concert because they've asked you not to but you want to do something differently, what else are you willing to railroad over?  It's a form of selfishness.  It seems we all want what we want when we want it, and we don't really care what it costs the other person, whether it is a photograph taken in the Sistine Chapel or Westminster Abbey (both places they ask you not to photograph, but MY GOD, watch the tourists "sneak" pictures), a "live" film to bootleg on YouTube or something larger, something with more sinister.  It occurred to me as I was thinking about that lady again this morning that it all springs from the same dark root, so maybe we shouldn't treat any of it lightly.

The Golden Rule exists in almost every ethical, moral, and religious system in the world for a reason.  It is stated slightly differently, but it is that bedrock principal for a reason.  Somehow, though, it seems as if we have gotten away from it, started looking down on it as a form of weakness or gullibility.  We've all taken our iPhones out of our pockets and started filming away when the mood strikes us forgetting that this behavior means that there will come a time when that little lens will be turned on us....and we might not like it so much then.

We need to get back to a place where we don't do things simply because somebody asked us not to do them.  Their wishes need to be reason enough.  There should be no need for bulletproof glass, security guards with truncheons, and searches before you go in.  Do to them what you want done to you.  That way, when you have your own moment of weakness or pain and you find yourself in need, you can reach out in confidence or close your door in privacy.  I think this is the world we'd all rather live in.

Punch Brothers in Birmingham, AL

The day finally came.  My little countdown ticker on my computer finally read "Today is Punch Brothers."  Yesterday, my students all were full of questions if I was going to come here to Birmingham and have a good time.  I told them with zero hesitation, "Heck, yes."  One of two of them said,  "You coming back?"  I just grinned and said, "Maybe..."  They laughed.  It's been no secret that I've been looking forward to this concert for a loooong time.

The show opened with Loudon Wainwright.  I hadn't heard him before, but I loved him.  His lyrics were thought-provoking, funny at times (well, usually), and profound.  He had several songs that I really want to get.  On payday, I will be looking for his stuff on Amazon to download.  He had a song about fathers and daughters that made me tear up thinking about my own father.  He had a song called "My Meds" that made me cry for other reasons, laughter.  He also had one about heaven being the place where everything that is forbidden on earth is permitted that was also hilarious.  There was also one commemorating the passing of Mr. Rogers that was very lovely. He was awesome.

Then, after the requisite intermission, there they were.  Last time I saw them, it was in the Riley Center, and I was in my usual seat next to that trusty support pole.  This time, though, I was there in the third row, almost dead center.  Let me tell you, it makes a big difference in the experience.

I love to watch them play. I don't mean I just like to look at them as a group on stage, or watch Chris Thile do his dances on stage; I actually love to watch what's happening with the instruments.  They are all so fabulously talented.  After years of being around this musician and that one, making pitifully fumbling  and failed attempts at a couple of those instruments, I know quality when I see it, and so I was more or less spellbound just watching them do what they do.  They make it look so damn easy when they're doing things that are ridiculously complicated, and I truly believe they're having fun.  I love them for both.

The audience was sort of too well-bred to clap much.  Sigh.  Bunch of professors and doctors.  Sheesh.  Just once, just once, I would like to see them in a crowd full of people who just holler and scream and cut up because the music moves them.  I wonder what IU would be like for them, what the music school crowd would be like for them as an audience?  IU is a good audience for everybody.  (and I am not prejudiced at ALL.)

Anyway.

Noam Pikelny played a song from his new album (which I now own, thankyouverymuch) called "Jim Thompson's Horse."  He started introducing it in that beautifully dry manner he has, and everybody sort of thought he was inventing a fantasy, I guess.  I didn't catch it either until he said the name.  Then I had one of those slap-the-forehead moments.  I knew exactly who he was talking about.  I've been to the Jim Thompson house, have a red Thai silk elephant on my guest room bed that I bought there when I was in Bangkok as a part of Volunteer Education Network.  I just want to know how he took that story and ran with it.  It's the most curious thing to have wound up in banjo land.  However, I suspect banjo land is different when he's the king of it, sort of like tsugaru shamisen grooves a little differently in the hands of Agatsuma.

It was all grand.  All the songs from the upcoming album were terrible teases.  I knew I wanted it before, but to hear them and then to know I can't get them for two or three weeks was just painful.  (Yeah.  I know.  Firstworldproblems.)  It will be a great day-after-my-birthday present.  I just have to keep telling myself that.  It will also help me have SOMETHING to look forward to on That Damn Day.

They finished up with "Rye Whiskey."  I'll have that song stuck in my head for happy weeks.  It and "Missy" are swapping back and forth right now.  I think that's not a bad mix, actually.   After the show, they were going to come out and sign, but I didn't stay for that.  I bought and pocketed my new and slipped away.  You know how I feel about having people write their names on things (nobody but Billy Collins, ever...I fangirl for nobody else but him).  I would like to tell them how great the show was, did tweet to their accounts that I loved it, but I don't think they notice things like that.  I imagine they are inundated with teh Twittah.

Despite the fact that this weekend got a bit expensive what with the gas and the hotel room and everything, I cannot consider one single dime of it ill-spent.  The five of them were just amazing, as they apparently always are. Loudon Wainwright was an unexpected bonus I look forward to learning more about.  In short,  I'd pay the fare to take the ride all over again.  Lately, I haven't been able to say that about much of anything.  Thank you, Punch Brothers and Mr. Wainwright, for a grand evening.

Birmingham Museum of Art

I wasn't really planning to blog until at least after tonight's concert, but I am just so completely blown away by the museum that I went to today that I have to get this down while it is still fresh in my mind.

I decided to come in to Birmingham early today and do something other than just "see the show."  There were a couple of reasons for that.  Birmingham has only ever been a city I dreaded driving through, a fast blur I cursed my own personal blue streak at as I tried to hit the junction for I-65 N as I headed up to Bloomington or as my parents drove on vacation.  I felt like it deserved to have a little bit more than that or a civic center to define it in my mind.

Then there is the fact that I inevitably get lost at least once every trip.  Since a concert is one of those things they sort of like you to show up on time for, I didn't want to have to fool with getting lost trying to find the auditorium and be stressed out about it.  (For those of you keeping score, I have already taken care of the lost bit and gotten it out of the way as I tried to find my hotel.  Hopefully, I'm done with that.)

Therefore, I came to the museum.  When I entered, I asked the docent at the desk what their entry fee was.  She just smiled and handed me some brochures.  There isn't one.  For a collection that size and that quality, I almost fell over.

The first gallery I toured was their education section, all of which had been done by local students. Two thoughts crossed my mind:  What must it be like to teach at those schools? and Oh, how I wish my darling babies could see this....  We have a strong art program at our school, but some of that work was just incredible.  There was even sumi-e.

Every kind of thing you can think of from Wedgwood to African Art to traditional American pottery to Japanese antiquities to pre-Columbian artifacts is in that one building.  I didn't see it all.  I couldn't.  I spent a considerable amount of time with the Asian collection (surprise, surprise), and stumbled across a small but lovely gallery of 14th - 18th century Italian  pieces in a variety of media, including some of the prizes of the museum, some terracotta studies of saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that were really amazing.

Three pieces from the whole have sort of stuck with me, though, haunting me long after I left the parking lot and got shoved by traffic onto the onramp for the interstate.  (yeah.  this was the beginning of "lost.")  The first was a painting by a French artist.  It was called "The Sorceress."  Something about it just grabbed me and pulled me in.  I've never seen anything like it. The painting was almost life-size.  I am almost certain that woman is going to start showing up in my dreams now.  This is not a good thing since she had a little voodoo doll and was stabbing it through the heart with a giant knife.  The painting was that...I hesitate to use the word captivating, but that's the only one I can come up with now.  It was really strange.  Everybody who saw it was pulled to it that way.  I can't explain.

The second piece was free-standing ceramic sculpture perhaps seven feet tall by a Bay Area potter whose stuff I saw before at SFMOMA and loved, Robert Arneson.  The piece I saw by him in San Francisco was tremendous, but the one I saw today made him one of my favorite artists ever.  I have to find out all about him now.  It was this fantastic clay self-portrait head which he deliberately disfigured and made a top of a perfectly-formed funerary urn.  Carved into it, both the head and the urn, were all types of phrases and reminders that we should not judge because "we are all just dust," and other things.  He had adapted a classical form and turned it personal as he was struggling with cancer.  It was just knock-you-down amazing, especially when you take the time to consider the skill involved in what he did to create it all.

The third piece was also pottery.  I suppose it is inevitable that I am carrying more of it than anything else.  I saw another Jomon vase today.  I have only ever seen one at the Aichi Prefectural pottery museum, I think it was, when I made my very first ever piece of pottery.  Jomon is literally thousands of years old.  When I look at Jomon, I feel amazed that we still do that same thing, we still shape mud and try to make it lovely, fire it so it becomes something else, use it in our daily lives.  Jomon is beautiful, too.  The shapes of the early pieces are lovely and very modern-looking.  I guess the cliche about everything old becoming new again is true, after all.  I stood and peered into that case surrounded by a whole gallery full of Japan for a long time.  It lifted something in my heart, and when I turned away, I felt better than I had in a long, long time.

I'll sit here a while longer, and then I'll go down and find something that will pass for food.  I'm not worried about a meal, really.  Just as long as it will keep body and soul together, that's fine.  I didn't come to eat.  I came to be fed with other things, things I can't really get at home. Part one of the "refueling" is more or less complete.  I guess you can say I've downloaded it and it has to finish the install (ha).  This isn't an easy day trip, but to know there is this much beauty this close might make me come this way again even if it is a heckuva drive home when I'm done.  I think it would be worth it.

Holding On and Letting Go

If I can just make it through today...
If I can just make it through today...

This is my little mantra.

The weekend is going to be chock-full of awesome.  Two days in Birmingham and Punch Brothers again await me, but I have to wade through one more day of ridiculous crap.  I didn't see it coming yesterday; it blindsided me.  All of a sudden, I was awash in something horrid.

I know how to deal with it now, but at the time, it caught me like a riptide and pulled me away from myself.  I've been in the situation before.  The only thing to do is just get away from the attitude that causes it.  It won't be easy, but like I said, I've had lots and lots of practice.

In a way, though, what happened also helps me to let go.  That inexplicable rudeness just makes it easier for me to see things objectively, clears away emotional ties to the situation as a whole.  Until I can make sure of my direction, I will just stay away from that individual altogether.  I can't understand what the problem is there, and to be perfectly honest, I just have too many other things that I need to focus on to untangle it.

I also need to keep telling myself that it is really only one or two people and only one or two little parts of my day.  It isn't that much.  Into everyone's life a little crap must fall, probably.  It was just so unnecessary, so seemingly arbitrary, and, well, so rude.  I hate rudeness.   Anyway.

Holding on and letting go.  It's a paradox, simultaneously contradictory and true.  My life is made up of this right now.  I yearn for the day when there are not so many contradictions in every hour.

Today Had....

• Sweetness after a long day of things that made me sad -- the fragrance of newly-opened daffodils on a cool breeze as I walked the dogs under a stormy night sky. Since they apparently refuse to repair the air in my classroom, it was wonderful to be in a place that wasn't almost eighty degrees.  The scent, one of my favorites in the spring, was just a peaceful bonus.
• A big relief -- Roux was able to walk and prance for the first time in a week thanks to her arthritis medicine and trip to the vet today.  She's been in such pain, and I was afraid her other knee had gone.  One ACL surgery for each one of us is enough, I think.  She's bouncy and back to something much more like herself now.
• Unbearable irony and probable foolishness -- spending time publicly defending someone because it was the right thing to do even though I'm pretty sure that person runs me down on a regular basis and considers me of little to no worth.
• Something that just never gets old -- Elvis singing "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You."  Sometimes there is no chance of anyone ever doing a cover that comes close.  
• The revelation of a Big Difference, apparently -- that "having a man" doesn't define my life.  I was asked by a class if I would give up all my traveling, etc., if I got a man.  (They were looking at my little countdown timers to all my trips, etc. on my computer desktop projected on the screen at the front of the class.) I told them no.  I said that he could go with me, be okay with it, or "get to steppin'."  Some of them were appalled.  Some of them, especially some of the girls looked sort of fascinated....

Haterade

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. ~James Baldwin

hatred bounces ~e.e. cummings

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I have had to deal with hatefulness all day long.  It's a mark of teenagers to sling insults at each other as casually as breathing.  This is a form of basic communication, almost like echo-location, I've decided.  Most of the time, there is actually little malice in it.  I still don't like it, and for the most part shut it down as soon as it starts in my room.  I have lost track of the number of times I've actually had to say, "Don't bring 'Yo mama' in my classroom.  We have other things to do."  I have a sign that says "Be Nice or Leave" hanging, and I believe in that policy.  It is sort of the rule of my room.  

Whenever that negativity starts, it seems to escalate and amplify with rabid speed.  The whole nature of a room changes.  I hate it.  There were two separate instances of it today.  Although I kept the students after class and dealt with it privately, I still have the migraine traces of it lingering, and I am tired.  It sucks the joy right out of a whole class for me.  I love these kids, and I want their best, not this other.

I wish I could better show them how their behavior affects others.  I know they are young and they just DON'T think, but there are so many cases when people are hurting and hiding it, and comments made are just daggers cutting away at them.  I am not necessarily referring to the situations at hand today.  I am just thinking now about life in general.  Why can't we be more careful with each other?  Why does it seem that we constantly choose the jeering ridicule when it would be just as easy to give a word of support?  Why can't we lift a hand to support instead of slap down?  It's the same hand, isn't it?  Don't we control it, tell it what to do?  Isn't the gesture equally easy?  Wouldn't it actually feel better not to hurt someone, to help them instead?  To create a friend instead of an enemy?

One of the worst parts of this job at times is feeling like nothing I do is getting through.  When I see them treat each other with such casual contempt and disrespect for the basic humanity in each other, it makes me so very sad.  While part of me hopes they will just "grow out of it," another part of me is afraid that they won't.  What will society lose, what will they lose themselves as individuals, if that is the case?

To Make You Feel My Love

So I got my thing from amazon.  I have been waiting for about a week, ever since I saw it first in a Paste Magazine article, for the Chimes of Freedom:  The Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International compilation to come out.  I haven't even been able to listen to all of it yet.  It's 4 CDs long (I have the digital download, but still), so it's 5 hours of music.  Almost everything I've heard is fantastic.

I'm sitting on the couch, getting ready to read, and iTunes clicks to the next song, and ....Oh Holy Jesus...  It's Adele doing "To Make You Feel My Love."  Now, let me tell you something about this song.  Long before I was "converted" to Dylan, I loved this song.  I have loved every version of it I have ever heard.  It makes something down deep inside me, that thing I hide in the fortress with no doors and routinely kick in the head for being useless and silly, sigh.  The lyrics are perfect in almost every way.

Now put Adele's voice with it.  She's just singing with piano accompaniment.  This is a song that demands simplicity, a focus on the words, and this cover delivers.  It's lovely.

I will probably blog about this whole collection again once I've gotten through it, but this unexpected delight just seemed to demand its own tribute.

Dog Damage and Other Joys

Something I was dreading today didn't happen.  It threatened and worried me for days, and then, inexplicably, it blew away like the last of the bad weather this morning.  I have no idea, and I am not going to worry about the whys.  I'm just going to be grateful for it and go on.  Tomorrow, it may be back....

Some of my students were hilarious today.  I had a "buzzard" impression from a kid with three cups of coffee in him that is still making me laugh.  It was a good day when I wasn't expecting one at all, the best of all possible kinds of good days.  It was the kind of good day that makes certain decisions I've been struggling with recently even more painful.

I finished up a set of papers after school, and I decided that I would, at long last, go get my Strawberry Cheesequake from Dairy Queen.  I have been craving one of those things for over a month, and after all the drama of the past few days, I felt entitled.  It was fantastic.  Not even the massive mobile home blocking the entire interstate could irritate me as I drove home (albeit slowly) with the Cheesequake and some very loud music.

When I got home, I found the remnants of a shredded Amazon envelope in my yard and some pieces of a book cover.  I knew exactly what had happened.  The book had been Chewie-ized.  UPS had not followed my instructions about putting things in a place where he can't get them.  I called them, and they very kindly are going to replace it.  I will, then, get a copy of Tomas Transtromer's The Great Enigma.  It just will be a little later than I had planned on.  Hopefully, the next time it comes to my house, it won't be something Chewie edifies himself with.

Now, I'm watching the restored Metropolis.  I don't know if I'll make it all the way thorough it since it is so long, but it's such a fantastic film, and i'm getting ready to start teaching dystopia, so it just seemed right.  If you've never seen it, it's out there in streaming digital land.  Make sure you get the restored version and watch it at least once.  I think everybody should see it at least once.  It is just so visually amazing if nothing else.  The scene with the "Shift Change" was just on, and I always identify with the people shuffling on and off the elevators, head down...

I may finish tonight up by staying up until midnight so I can download a new album I want.  I know that's a little silly.  It will be there when I wake up tomorrow, but I have been sort of looking forward to it since I found out about it a couple of days ago, and I would like to get it as soon as I can.  Isn't that ridiculous?  It isn't like I can listen to it a hundred times tonight.  However....  I very well may do it anyway.  Sometimes the things that don't make any sense at all are inexplicably the most fun.

Well, Metropolis is getting involved, so I'm turning my eyes to the screen.  I hope tomorrow is as good as today.  That would be wonderful.

Want.

Sam Clark has been making dragons again....  Everything he does is so fabulous.  I want this.  If he lasts just a bit longer, he will be part of my birthday indulgences.  Love, love, love him.  He's small (about 3 inches), so he's a "baby" compared to the other red dragon I have, but the glazes are brilliant and I just adore his detail.  Do Want.  Will Have.  (you know...unless somebody else beats me to him....)

Dragon Year

THE SIGN OF THE DRAGON

The key to the Dragon personality is that Dragons are the free spirits of the Zodiac. Conformation is a Dragon's curse. Rules and regulations are made for other people. Restrictions blow out the creative spark that is ready to flame into life. Dragons must be free and uninhibited. The Dragon is a beautiful creature, colorful and flamboyant. An extroverted bundle of energy, gifted and utterly irrepressible, everything Dragons do is on a grand scale - big ideas, ornate gestures, extreme ambitions. However, this behavior is natural and isn't meant for show. Because they are confident, fearless in the face of challenge, they are almost inevitably successful. Dragons usually make it to the top. However, Dragon people be aware of their natures. Too much enthusiasm can leave them tired and unfulfilled. Even though they are willing to aid when necessary, their pride can often impede them from accepting the same kind of help from others. Dragons' generous personalities give them the ability to attract friends, but they can be rather solitary people at heart. A Dragon's self-sufficiency can mean that he or she has no need for close bonds with other people.

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There was this painting I wanted but didn't get to buy when I was in Japan going to Nara to the artist shows with one of my friends every year.  It was fantastic.  It showed an oni (a Japanese ogre), a koi (a prized and expensive carp), and a dragon.  The quote said, "Even a small ogre is still an ogre.  Even a dead koi is still a koi.  Even a sick dragon is still a dragon."  It sold before I could purchase it.  I have a work by that artist, which is wonderful, but not that one.  I still wish for it.  I still think of it because frequently I'm a sick dragon.  It might be headaches or foolish outside nonsense or sadness, but these things, they happen.  However, as the painting said, I am still a dragon.

Tomorrow starts my third dragon year on this earth.  I was born in one, passed one in graduate school, and now the third great turning of that wheel is here.  In a short time, too, I will have a birthday.  Many wheels are coming full-circle.

Normally, I wait for February to begin to start what I term my "Month of Senseless Indulgence."  You can find other posts here about that, but more or less, I do lots of little things I enjoy and buy myself a couple of things that I might normally not just because, just to remind myself that life is good.  My birthday usually sucks.  LOTS.  This is my way of ensuring that even if the day itself is horrid and useless, that some sweetness is there to temper it.  

I woke up this morning with something (or a couple of somethings) bothering me, and when I saw a post from a friend on FB reminding me that our year (he's a Dragon, too, born one day after me) was about to begin, I made a decision.  Why wait?  I started my indulgences early.

I took myself clothes shopping, something I don't actually enjoy very much, but I needed to refurbish a couple of things in my wardrobe and I was more or less in the mood for it, so I figured, "Hey, strike while the iron is hot."  While I was in the store, I passed by the racks of lingerie.  Well, yes, that was on my list.  I needed to toss some of mine, and so I headed over, looked at some of the more sensible choices.  And then I remembered the Dragon Year.  My eyes slid across the rack, and it must be admitted that I grinned to myself.

What came home with me was not all sensible.  To hell with it.  Life is not always sensible.  Sometimes one simply needs leopard print undergarments.  (well, maybe not if you are a guy.  I don't know.  maybe if you are a guy, too.... I'll have to ask one sometime, but I'm betting this does not work for them...)  Nobody but me is going to know I have them on (you know, ideally.  barring an emergency circumstance.  in which case my undies are the least of my concern, quite frankly.)  and it's nice to have nice things.  Yeah.  Think that's going to be my motto for this year's indulgences.  What could possibly go wrong with that?

(Oh boy.  Yeah.  Anybody want to sign up to be my full-time keeper until this current little reckless mood passes?  This sounds like something that could end BADLY.)

It Had to Be

it had to be
it had to be until
the end of the year.

~ Basho
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A thought for the Chinese New Year.  The Year of the Dragon (my year. I am a Dragon.) begins tomorrow.  Tomorrow, perhaps, then begins the change of many things.  You know us Dragons......

Suitcase Days

The fog is so thick this morning that even the pecan trees in the front yard are ghostly, misted, hard-to-see.  I had bizarre dreams, so waking to this just continues a trend.

It's a Suitcase Day for me.  That means that more than anything in the universe today, I want to put everything that's important to me in a suitcase and get the hell out of here.  And when I say "out of here," I mean so far away that nobody can ever find me.  I don't even care where.  I just want to run.

I can almost feel the itch between my shoulder blades where the imaginary wings might be, and if I had two nickles to rub together here at the end of the worst month in the already-stupidly-crappy teaching pay year, I would just do it, just get in my car and go.  I feel so claustrophobic this morning, even standing out in the yard with Roux on a leash under the wide sky, that I can hardly breathe.  I can feel things pressing down on me (and no, I won't be specific here.  get over it) like a thick, sopping wet cloth over my face that I can't peel away.

This is not an "oh-how-nice-it-would-be-to-see-the-world" moment.  This is an "oh-how-f'd-up-this-all-is-here" moment.  It started Friday afternoon and has snowballed on me.  Some of it is beyond my control.  Some of it is totally, utterly, and completely my fault, but I can't fix it now.  I need to be away, away, AWAY, in a place where nobody knows me, where I'm just another person, ignored and unknown, totally uninteresting.

Better yet, if I had the power to be somewhere where even the language was not mine, and the sound could flow across me with no meaning and no demand... I am thinking of the Toyokawa Inari shrine for some reason, the oddly peaceful local train ride to get there, the glade of stone foxes in the back.  I have obligations tonight that I must fulfill; I cannot pawn them off on somebody else.  But until it is time for that, I may find a way to disappear.

Losing My Words

I wrote this because of something that happened to me this morning.  I suspect, based on the current state of my head, that I am pre-migraine.  It might just be the good old Topamax.  This happens to me a lot, though.  The names of things go wandering.  It is more frustrating than I can tell you as a person who lives in and loves language and words.  At times, it is highly embarrassing.  Imagine looking at someone you have known a long time and not being able, literally not being able, to call that person's name.  This is my world.  

Losing My Words

I am standing in the kitchen
with this bright red not-a-spatula in my hand
spreading the last of the Nutella
on the last of the wheat bread

My mind frantically digs and scrapes
like this nameless flexible rubber tool
trying to get into the edges
and find that which has been left behind

But the word I need, the name has gone
ducked into dark corners
like a child playing hide-and-seek
at an inopportune moment

It will reappear long after
my need for it is done
shout “Here I am!”
smile appealingly and try to crawl into my lap in apology

But for now, I’m left searching
muttering dark incantations
 to force meaning to object
“Does it start with an F?”

Meanwhile, my hands, undaunted and serene
continue their confident labor
having lost no part of their skill and function
because the thing they use is currently anonymous

The Day in Review

a list


Today I:

• fought totally unexpected and major plumbing problems first thing in the morning.
• used up all my Nutella.  This is a tragedy of epic proportions.
• was accosted by a little white slip of paper bearing a phone message as soon as I got to school.  DO NOT WANT.
• inexplicably got "historical" and "mythological" switched every single time I needed to say them.
• once again fell in love with Hamlet.  This happens every time I open the play.  He's such a magnificent smart-ass.
• made a decision to extend a little mercy to somebody. It will probably get kicked in my face and taken for granted or ridiculed.
• woke up from freaky dreams in which one friend helped me move stuff around in a crumbling apartment in Japan we lived in together while another one kept showing up and messing with my hairstyle and laughing. (That would be you, Clip, for the apartment, and you, Faustus, for the hairdos, respectively.)  No.  I don't know why.  Maybe it was something I ate?
• got asked several times if The Great Gatsby was a good book.  Oh YES.  Oh YES, my children....
• also got asked what the Kama Sutra is. Answered.  Was asked if I had a copy.... (sigh)
• taught my second Comp class.  Loved it again.
• got a wonderful comment on this blog referring me to a new poet to explore.  Fantastic.
• craved and didn't get a Strawberry Cheesequake from Dairy Queen.  This is like two weeks running I've wanted one of those stupid things.  TOMORROW IS THE DAY.
• have only nine days until Punch Brothers.

Now I'm going to watch a little TopGear, maybe a movie, and then I'm going to bed.  After a week in which my students have thought another teacher was hitting on me because he came into my classroom and asked me a question and have also asked me about the Kama Sutra (different classes altogether, mind you), I probably need to be on top of my game for whatever tomorrow has up its sleeve. O.o

Now

I should have stayed last night.  I knew it when I put the car in gear, when I backed out and saw the others in my rear view mirror headed into the building.  I just couldn't do it.  I had a curiously hollow place just under my heart that forbade it.  The normally-loud interior of my little Cruiser was quiet; I hadn't even hooked my iPhone to the stereo.  I made the necessary automotive contortions to get out of my space, and I drove away.  I did not look back again.

I didn't have to go to know what was going to happen.  It's been happening again and again for so long now that I probably could have scripted the dialogue for it ahead of time, just another kind of horror fiction.  To be honest, I am not sure it even hurts anymore.  Should it?  Maybe.  But increasingly, the part of me that used to be hurt, scared, alive enough to react has been stabbed so much that it just can't react to new injury from that particular stimulus now.

I was told that I would know when the end of a thing had come, and as I sit here now gazing over my precious little space, once again, I feel the rightness of that.  What that truly means remains to be seen.  The direction is still unclear.  I only know that what is, is unbearable.  What is, is unmaking me.  So many people who know me and care about me have been telling me this for so long now, but I have been ignoring that, have been pretending that it isn't true, that I can be stronger than all of this for so long.  The simple truth is that I'm not.  Nobody is or can be forever.  Water wears away solid stone; look at the Grand Canyon for proof if you need it.  Before all the things that I hold most precious are gone in me beyond the point of reclamation, I am going to make a choice.  I can't help anybody else ever if I myself am destroyed and wrecked beyond use, and that's the point we're coming to quickly.

But there's always another way.

It's time to find it.

Surreality

"Your life may have a surreal quality to it now..."  ~ Daily Twittascope for Aquarius, 1/16/12

Well, who knows what the rest of it said because I didn't open it up and read it, but this part of it, at least, was dead-on.  Today has been odd.  I sort of feel like I am trapped in a de Chirico painting.  Everything is put together just a little wrong, all the angles are wrong, and there is always something lurking in the wings that hides if I try to look at it straight.

I slept really late for me (8:30), and when I took the dogs out for their morning romp, I heard something rustling in the edges of the woods.  I remember thinking foggily had a unicorn stepped out of the woods, it would have just fit my mental state perfectly.  Of course, my luck does not tend to gravitate toward unicorns.  Usually, if I get surprises, they tend to be more of the killer slasher beast variety....

There has been this oddest and totally inexplicable sense of the world being shifted just slightly to the left today for no good reason that I can come up with, almost like it was holding its breath and waiting for something auspicious to happen.  I can't tell you why.  There is nothing auspicious that I know of that can happen to me.  Maybe it's that my routine is thoroughly fried.  Maybe it's the Murakami I'm reading.  Maybe if I'd read the rest of the Twittascope, it could have told me, and the answer was in some mystical conjunction of the spheres (ha).  

Tomorrow will probably take care of it with the crushing return of routine and all its accompanying joys.  Right now, though, I'm just going to keep reading, listening to Billie and Ella, and go with it.  Who knows?  Maybe there is a unicorn in the woods after all.  I'll keep my eye out and let you know.

The Onslaught of Cupid

Love is being stupid together. ~Paul Valery

We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness - and call it love - true love. ~Robert Fulghum,True Love
__________________________________

Valentine’s Day is starting to fill every conceivable space. The red and white menace is creeping like some horrid form of kudzu into retail space both real and virtual. The front page of Etsy screams at you every time you log on, reminding you exactly how many days it is until that most hellish of holidays.

Sigh. Great. One more year when I won’t get flowers. One more year when I won’t have anyone to buy anything for myself. One more year alone.

It’s enough to make somebody my age start to think about options, settling, just finding someone, ANYONE, and getting it “over with.” I think a part of me would just die, though. If all I wanted was just a ring, even I probably could have managed that at some point in the past. Granted, I am not beautiful. No line of guys has ever stood outside my door hopefully waiting for my notice, but probably, I could have found somebody if I were diligently looking. (This is my story, and I’m sticking to it.)

It’s always been about more than this to me, though. I don’t want just somebody. I am looking for something specific. Oh, I don’t mean some sort of magic, eyes-meeting-across-the-room moment. I did that once, remember? It went very, very badly, and I don’t think I’m particularly interested in going through it again. What I want in a man is something a lot more complex and apparently a hell of a lot harder to find. Who knew that the electric rush, the magic, Disney scene was the easy thing to get hold of? (Okay, so T. shouldn't be classified as Disney.  He was never G-rated, not even that first look he gave me...)

I want someone I can talk to. I don’t mean that in the trite sense. I don’t need an audience. I mean I want someone who can keep up, participate. He doesn’t have to be an expert in the things I love; I’m not looking for a twin or a mirror. I don’t want us to wear matching outfits. I don’t want him to give up who he is and what he loves for me. I just want to find someone who is interested in at least some of the same things as me. I want compatibility. I want a friend. When I say, “Oh, that’s awesome,” I’d love it if he were right there beside me saying, “Too right. Let’s go.”

That’s the core of it in a nutshell. Oh, there are all kinds of little physical attributes I gravitate toward. If you can’t tell from my comments and the pictures of “pretty men” I post here and on Tumblr on rare occasions, I seem to like them tall and blue-eyed (no real hair color preference), built strong but not bulky, like a swimmer or a soccer player. Personality-wise, I like them brilliant, into everything, cynically funny, musical, and just a little (or maybe more than a little) dark. None of this is really the key, though. The essential thing, the thing that matters, is that connection of the minds, those threads of commonality.

Ultimately, then, I guess I’m looking for somebody who will go on adventures like I went on yesterday to take pictures and protect me from myself when I’m not paying attention and who I can also depend upon to pin me against a wall and kiss me senseless when needed. Somebody who is passionate about the world and all this wonder there is in it, wants to see it with me, and is also passionate about me, can be passionate with me. I’m looking for a best friend I can wake up next to every morning, can come home to every night.

I don’t think this will make everything perfect. I do not expect any relationship to be a rainbow of hearts and flowers. After all, even with the friends that I have now, disagreements still occur. Even with my very best friend, the one I’ve had since I was five, there have been hard times and moments when the two of us didn’t connect very well, and she knows almost literally everything there is to know about me. She’s also a girl. There’s not that gender barrier that is bound to cause crap between us. I can’t imagine, though, any sort of relationship with a man being of any use or worth wasting a minute over if it wasn’t this. Anything else would be something so inferior, something so obviously doomed to fail, something so tremendously less than what it could be. Why would anyone ever settle for that?

I suspect that waiting for this, the ideal of this, is why I’m still alone. I may never get this. Maybe it’s unreasonable. I’m going to keep waiting, though. The alternative, occupying myself with people I know don’t fit the bill just to pass the time, is every bit as grim to me as simply being alone. Therefore, while it’s going to be so hard to watch the rest of the world “bill and coo” this Valentine’s Day, I guess I’ll just turn my head and hope for better in the future. I don’t really know what other option I have.

The Spirit of a Place

(Or, Ambitious but Rubbish)

Today, I got to go take some pictures at a place I've wanted to shoot at for a long time.  It's an abandoned amusement park in a nearby town.  I've been hearing about it for years and years.  It's been on my "Holy Grail" list for a long time now, but it's in a place that I should not really go by myself, secluded and lots of trees, possibly also inhabited by the homeless, so I have never been able to get in there and get any pictures.  Today, though, one of my friends came home from DC, and she decided that it was on her list of things to do as well, so her sister, she, and I hatted up and went to see Royal Land.

It was both oddly wonderful and oddly sad, which, I suppose, is to be expected of an abandoned amusement park.  We could find no equipment left in the complex.  All we saw were signs of others' presence, an eerie abandoned doll, wrecked and burned furniture, a child's shoe.  Clearly someone had been living there.  We didn't go all the way to the back, and we didn't stay inside the gates long.We took a lot of pictures outside and left.  As I drove home, I thought about the experience.

The town where I go to take many of my pictures has a pervasive problem.  Maybe it isn't unique to that single place.   It seems that all too often big projects get undertaken and abandoned; important things are allowed to decay and disappear; instead of preservation and appreciation, a great deal of quick, cheap replacement occurs.

I keep thinking about the general state of repair of things around town.  For a very long time, one of the great jewels, a movie palace from the heyday of film, was being allowed to fall into ruin.  The ceiling is spotted from leaks, the plaster on the walls of the stairwells is in need of repair, and nobody was using it at all.  Finally, someone came and saved it.  It is starting to recover at last.  Performances are being held in it once again.  Films are being show in its lavish walls.  While the restoration process is slow-going, it is no longer being lost.

Then there was the opera house.  There was a gorgeous gem hidden away, locked up, and forgotten.  Almost nobody cared.  It was out of fashion, like a diamond in a setting nobody wanted to wear.  Despite the efforts of a few local people, it took people coming in from outside to see its true worth and save it.  Now, it is a wonderful place to go and see concerts again.  We have world-class shows coming in to something that even ten years ago was still a dusty memory in the minds of most.

I photograph so many other things that are on the verge of being past reclamation, a skyscraper that has deco details that put it on the National Historic Register; an old train car that is a remnant of this city's legendary status as a rail hub without equal.  Some of what I've shot is actually already gone or beyond recall, an old hotel they waited too long to try to save, an amusement part that was never very good in the first place.  How many other things will join them in the pile of cast-offs and left-behinds?

What a city builds says a lot about it, what it chooses to create.  I think, though, you can also tell a lot about a place by looking at what it chooses to save, by whether it chooses to reclaim or destroy and start again.  Then there are the things that can be learned by what a place chooses to neglect....   I wonder what these choices are saying about this town?

Thinking

I taught my first college class in a long, long time yesterday.  It happened in my own little high school room with students from my school.  It's a dual-enrollment thing offered by our local community college so they can get early credit for the core classes they'll need regardless of where they're going.

As I was standing there going over the class syllabus, I was amazed at how different it felt to be doing that again.  It was the same place, the same student population (although none of them are actually mine during the day), the same equipment surrounding me.  How I felt behind that podium was completely different.

I know that I am different with AP than I am with my regular classes to some degree because they have to be pushed harder and faster, but they are still high school kids in a high school world.  High school rules apply.  High school rules are all too often about giving about a million chances, about taking anything that is turned in.  Even though I have a reputation for being one of the "harder" teachers (as in students flee my class in droves at the beginning of the year), I know that I, too, frequently err on the side of mercy because they are still kids.  Not every time.  I won't get into my philosophy on this here.  It's long and it's complex, and it would be a whole blog by itself.

College is another ballgame.  I had forgotten what it feels like to be able to tell people to their faces that you will not take any assignment they turn in to you that has those stupid little edges that come out of a notebook without perforations because that's NOT PROPER PAPER.  I had forgotten what it is like to be able to tell people on the very first day of class that after the second time you have to say something to them about their cell phones they will be dismissed from your room (not sent down to the office, blah, blah, blah) and told not to come back until they have a conference with you.  Then they can be readmitted to the course at your discretion.  The ability to tell students that after they are absent I get to decide whether or not they CAN do makeup work for me is at my discretion based upon their explanation of their absence is almost totally foreign after so long in K-12.

It's not about power tripping.  Maybe it sounds like that.  I don't mean for it to be.  I will likely never have to use that cell phone rule.  Actually, I really don't care if they slip them out of their pockets to check the time, if you want to know the truth.  Everybody has done it. Most likely, I will allow anyone who is absent (unless they tell me "Uh, I just didn't come because I didn't want to" to do makeup work.  What this stuff gives that I don't have in my current environment, maybe, is the sense that what is going on is important.  It brings a maturity and a focus to the learning.  The stuff in that syllabus says, "You are here for a reason.  You are going to be doing something that matters.  If you can't get on board with that, get out.  The rest of us have important stuff to do.  We don't have time to waste with trivial shit."  I wish there was more of that intensity in high school education.

It's just a little thing, just a little class, just a little hybrid comp course.  But it's got me thinking.  I can't say that it doesn't.

Athena and Me

(here there be stupid stuff.  you have been warned.)

Don't ask what started me chasing this rabbit.  I don't even know.  But now I'm deep into it, and it's turned into a full-on blog.  If you have something better to do, well, you know...

Probably it was this morning when I was getting ready.  I pulled my owl necklace out of the box and put it on, the one I got at the Parthenon in Nashville.  It's a little silver replica of Athena's owl, and I smiled when I fastened the clasp, thinking that I had at least a few other things than my fondness for owls in common with the mythical lady.  I started running those over in my head.

Then I got curious.  I don't know that I've ever really looked up stuff on just Athena.  I've researched background for stories in which she is a major character, and I know her basic aspects, but now my little research monster was hungry, so...

It's sort of funny and frightening.  The owls behind me are looking on in calm amusement.  Yeah.  I have one or two things in common.  For instance:

• War Goddess -- She's not into the stupid raging bloodlust side (that's her brother Ares) but rather strategic butt-kicking. She is, and I quote, a warrior maiden.  Check.  Where's my sword?
• She Likes Her Men Smart -- Who does she support/mentor/back/pick?  Not the Achilles/Ajax crew.  Nope.  Odysseus.  Jason (before he gets dumb and dumps his witch wife).  Heracles.  She goes for the smart ones.  Check again. 
• Good with Her Hands -- The metalwork of weapons is in her hands.  So is weaving.  She can make stuff.  Lots of stuff.  Have you seen my work room?
• Forever Alone -- No men at any time.  Not even those smart, pretty ones.  (HITTING TOO CLOSE TO HOME.)
• Competitive -- Too much so.  Over the top so.  She made a freaking olive tree to win a competition.  (Yeeah....  Don't go there with me.  I like to keep that side of me in a nice little box even if I can't whip out any olive trees on you.)
• The Owls -- Enough said.

They say you only need three points of comparison to have a legitimate argument.  I think I have more than three.  Hmm....  Well.  I suppose it could be worse.  

Everything Is Broken

Broken bottles broken plates
Broken switches broken gates
Broken dishes broken parts
Streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken
Everything is broken.

"Everything Is Broken" ~ Bob Dylan
_____________________________
Broken seems to be the theme for my recent life. First my thermostat on my heater did its little song and dance. Then my car decided to have its thousand dollar crisis. Now my big freestanding freezer in the laundry room has gone to its final reward. Objects live their lives, give out, need repair or replacing. Parts fail. Cracks develop. Flaws that were there all the time surface.

The material things are a nuisance, something to be worked around, absences to be endured. They aren't the things that take the joy from the days. It's brokenness on a larger scale that does that, broken relationships, broken ties.

I feel a little adrift right now, disconnected. I keep looking for a person at work who isn't there anymore. There's a great emptiness where she used to be, sort of a dullness. My biggest hope for her is that she's happy now, having a good time, peaceful. I miss her being around, though. There is a definite lack. It's strange how her absence has made me feel that I am somehow gone in some way, too. I don't know how to explain it. It's like some part of me got packed up, too, when she left. This is not a good explanation, and I know it, but it's the best I can give.

And then there's the thing I wrote about on Saturday....

I keep thinking there is going to be a day when I wake up and everything is repaired or whole. I'd settle for a day when there were no new emergencies. I don't think you get to wake up to that as a magic gift, though. Probably work and effort are involved. The big question is, though, how to do it. How does one fix all this stuff? I'm not so good at the fixing, to be honest. I'm much better at the avoiding, at the ignoring and pretending like nothing is wrong, at the praying that all things will be well instead of the hands-on maintenance.

There is no remedy for some of the things that are broken. They were cut off clean, over and done. They have been carried out, carried away; they are finished. Other things, well, they are broken, but I am not sure they wish to be repaired. I can't be sure one way or the other, and so I'm leaving them alone. That's all I know to do with them. I'm afraid that anything else will just destroy whatever shards may still stand if anything can be said to be left standing at all.

All I know is that as I sift through the jumble that's left, I get tired of bits and pieces. I miss the things that they used to be. Everything disappears with time, I guess. Some things, though, I really wish weren't gone.

The Car

I got my car back today, finally.  The damage to my pocketbook was as serious as the damage to all the moving bits and pieces under the hood.  The final bill was almost a thousand dollars.  Nowhere in my budget did I have that, but if it won't go without it....

I cannot express how happy I am to have the vehicle back.  Or at least how happy I will be, at any rate, once the shock of having to write that check has worn off.  There was nothing like having to coordinate borrowing or using one of my parents' vehicles for every single thing I wanted to do to make me feel dependent and horrible. It was miserable.

Even though I know I was very lucky to be in a situation where there was some other form of transportation available, all I could think of was how..."unfree"...I was.  I could feel it like a hand holding a bird's wings down. I did not feel free to go anywhere or do anything except the most necessary of things.

I know I've noted this before, but it's worth repeating.  It's amazing how much of our personality is reflected in our vehicles.  I did not feel like myself behind the wheel of either of my parents' cars.  I felt somehow altered, like I'm pretending to be somebody else.

Maybe tomorrow everything will settle down some.  It would be nice to think that just having my vehicle back will be a magic panacea, that all the things that are screwed up in my life will be fixed.  Unfortunately, as silver bullets go, I don't think this one has much power behind it.  Somedays, though, I guess you just sort of take what you can get.

Remembering How Much You DO Have

...and letting the rest go.

Yesterday, somebody looked right through me.  As in, no recognition.  As in, just another stranger standing there instead of somebody I talk to fairly often, somebody I had thought was my friend.

I don't know why it happened.  I just looked up, and quite unexpectedly there it was.  It caught me off-guard so badly that I just stood there, and then it was over.  There was no time to talk.  It ate at me.  And it took me back to places I didn't need to go.

That's the kind of shit D. used to do.  I'd be good enough for all kinds of things...until I suddenly wasn't.  I was a friend when I could do something for him, when he wanted somebody who would listen to him, when there wasn't somebody more interesting around or when he'd pissed all the others off, when he felt like it was my rotation in the harem for the glorious gift of his attention.  It was never really me he wanted.  It was only some reflection of himself. I don't feel like playing those games ever again with anybody on any level for any reason.

It's alright.  It hurt, but it's alright.  God knows, I've been kicked down the fucking stairs before.  It's not new.  It was just from a direction I was not anticipating.  Whatever.

One good thing did come from it.  It made me think about what I do have, people who will never do that to me, and how blessed I am with them. It's humbling.  So to all of you who routinely have a roll in putting your hands on this fractured surface and holding me together despite all odds, thank you.  I love you.  I don't say that enough, probably.

I need to just let the rest of it drop away.  If it's a lost cause, if I've been that wrong this long, then I need to just forget it.  I'm not going to keep holding onto a razor-sharp blade just to watch it cut deeper into my hand.  That stopped being my idea of fun a long time ago.

What I Already Knew

I forget this from time to time, so maybe I need to have it tattooed on the back of my hand so I will see it constantly.

Everybody is going to hurt you.  It's just a matter of when, how much, and the degree of intentionality of the act.

Maybe if I saw that every minute of every day, it wouldn't keep coming as such a shock.  Maybe if I repeated that as a mantra, a meditation upon waking, then I could be ready for it, maybe I wouldn't bleed when it happens.

It's just a matter afterward of deciding if you keep going with that person despite the pain or if you walk away. What are they worth to you?  Are they going to do it again?  (Be honest here.)  If so, can you keep living with it?  Should you?

I don't have that answer right now.  And you know what?  I'm tired.  Screw it.  And quite frankly, just at this moment, that individual, too.

A List

What it says on the tin.

Today involved:

• Waking up from a night of truly horrible dreams, in one of which, in fact, I died.  (And yes, I know you're not supposed to do that in your dreams, but there you have it.)  It may be one of the worst and most profoundly disturbing dreams I have ever, ever had.  That's how I started the day, folks.....
• Another delay in the car repair.  It *might* be ready tomorrow.....
• Another big migraine and pill to repel it.  I managed to hide in my room for lunch and clutch my head in the privacy of that 20 minutes.  I was probably written up for that, too, by my new administrator.
• A big sort of dead numbness inside where my emotions ought to be.  I do not know if this is the Maxalt (I'm hoping) or if I'm just finally gone.  And if I am finally just gone, I do not know of one single thing I can do about it.
• Driving my Dad's vehicle which actually has a V6 and tops out at 160.  No, I didn't quite get it up to that.  That would be highly illegal.
• Wearing Gatsby hidden under my plain black jacket again.  He didn't stop the headache, but he was a hint of blue, and he made me smile.  I was hoping against hope that my new The Sun Also Rises shirt would be here for tomorrow, but no dice.  I might wear 1984 instead.  The red will be nice, and that is the January required reading for AP.
• One of my students asking me about a Murakami novel.  God love him, he sort of made my afternoon.  He may be the first AP student I have ever taught who knows who that is.  I think I might adopt him, put him through school, just on the basis of this alone.
• Assorted piles of sleeping doggishness on my floor.  Which, with the greatest of reluctance, I must disrupt to walk and crate for the night so I don't find all things in the living room destroyed in the morning.

I tried very hard to put in good things here because I know I put in bad.  I don't want to be bad all the time.  Maybe I balanced it some.  I'm trying.  I need good dreams tonight.  I need my car back tomorrow.  I need....I don't even know what else to ask for.  At least it will be Friday.  That's something.

Bits and Pieces

I've had a big migraine pill, so if I wander, forgive me.  I didn't have enough food in my system when I took it, and so I'm sort of untethered.

Today was better than I expected it to be on several fronts.  I'm not worried about some things anymore. The thing that had been giving me nightmares resolved itself.  I think I will be able to live with it.  Only time will tell if it will be better than that.  I don't want to be any more hopeful right now than this.

I found out that not only is the power steering out in my car, but it also apparently has a coolant leak, too.  The coolant leak may have caused the power steering problem, in fact, as the leak has been dripping on the power steering pump.  They discovered the leak this morning since it was making a tidy little puddle in their garage.  They called me and gave me the $200 tidings of great joy to start my day.  What can you do?  It's not like I can knit a new one.  I told them to fix it.  It meant at least another day without my car.  Hopefully I'll have it back by the end of tomorrow....

The headache took me midday.  I tried to ignore it, never a good idea.  I don't know why I try.  It was a product of stress, too much for too long, worrying about the car and the day.  It was a product of being corralled in meetings, which, no matter how pleasant they were, I do not sit through with any sort of ease.  I keep thinking to myself, "Can we not just say what needs to be said and go?"  I have no patience for it.  I am an abysmal "meeter."

Mom had to come get me both because I had no car and because of the medicine.  She kindly took me through Chick-Fil-A and got me dinner which is helping to mitigate some of the worst of the fog.  I didn't even remember what day it was when she got me.  I kept thinking it was Monday...  I am going to get a brownie from the kitchen (if there are any.  I think there were brownies.  I don't think that was a cruel illusion...) and keep sitting here watching TopGear for a while longer.

It was just a day of bits and pieces. I didn't get done everything I needed to do.  I will have to try to play catch up tomorrow.  It's probably about where I expected to be.

Tomorrow

I need to be grading, but I can't focus on it.  I have that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I'm out of distractions.  I have done everything I possibly can to put tomorrow out of my mind, but there's nothing left.

I did intricate, tedious computer stuff.  I took apart my MSI Wind, put in new memory, shifted around a whole bunch of files, made it work right again.  I set up my new 2 TB external drive, got it synced.  I moved my iTunes from one drive to another on the netbook which, of course, destroyed a bunch of crap, and so I fixed, and am fixing that. While I was doing some of that, I also talked to one of my friends on the phone for awhile.  I talked to one of my others online earlier.

But I'm out of stuff to do.  It was all worth the doing.  It all needed to be done.  My netbook works right now.  It is not just a ridiculous memento.

When I run out of things to do, though, I have to start thinking.  Thinking about what tomorrow is going to be like since what has happened has happened.  And I really, really don't want to think about it.

I wish I had another distraction, something else to take apart, put together.  If I had my car, I would be sorely tempted to get in it tonight and point it in a random direction.  It's as good a time for running as I've seen.

I'm going to put this laptop back down so the netbook can finish pulling music off it.  I'm going to pick back up the red pen and the papers from the floor.  I'm going to do my level best not to pick up all the horrible little shouting demons of worry that are clustered there with them waiting.  It's been such a nice two weeks.  I wish it could just keep going.

Drama

I've been exceptionally self-conscious all day as I've written things, said things.  All I've been able to think of was a comment yesterday said in passing by a friend in conversation.  A phrase I'd written was called "dramatic."  Maybe it was.  I didn't intend it to be.  It was just an ordinary garden-variety comment for me.  Maybe I'm so steeped in the drama that I don't even see it anymore.

God knows I can go there quickly enough if I want to.  I can elevate anything, even getting a fork out of the kitchen drawer, to an epic quest when the whimsy takes me. Words are amusing and pretty.  They tumble together nicely, make a lovely sound as they click together.  They are the tools of my particular trade, and I can wield them to different ends as I choose.  Sometimes taking the mundane and making the mighty is a lot of fun, too.

The response just caught me off-guard.  Oh, I know I do tend toward hyperbole in my speech and in this particular type of blog writing as well.  I turn fancy phrases and play with images, trot it all out on parade.  I am aware that sometimes I turn out gaudies that more properly belong in something like Carnival, that it frequently lacks an elegance and grace that I might wish it had.  I just never had the sensation of myself as a "drama queen."

Of my kind, the English Literature folk, as in every profession, there are several "types." Nobody is a perfect fulfillment of those archetypes, of course, but we do tend to fall into big categories.  One of those stays over-the-top or in another world, eccentric for the sake of it, dramatic for the joy of the shock of it.  This comment made me worry.  Have I crossed that line?  If I did, when did it happen?  Is it possible to become that and not know?

I guess I know how to play that role, sure.  I could put myself into hysterics and "the vapors" if it were called for.  I grew up in the Deep South.  I have seen it done by certified experts.  I just don't really think of myself as someone who actively seeks drama in my daily life.  In some of my current environments, it comes and drags me out of the foxholes I've dug for myself, pulls me into the fray....

But maybe that's the kind of language we're talking about here that's over-the-top.  I don't know.  It's confusing.

However.

The longer I sit here with it, the more I am convinced that I don't think I'm going to worry about this a whole  lot more, actually.  I am who I am.  I write the way I write (and this can be expanded to "talk the way I talk" as well).  I have hands that fly like a flock of startled sparrows when I teach; I'm gesture-happy.  This is just me.  I know that is not a pleasant thing for everyone.  Well, lo siento.  Gomenasai, ne?  If I'm not mistaken, there is a door right over there....

Sad

I am desperately seeking something to cheer myself up and failing miserably.  The sadness is creeping in like a slow fog rolling in and covering everything.  I just wrote a goodbye letter to somebody.

I did not want to write the letter.  I did not want to say goodbye.  This situation is so STUPID.  I can't even wrap my mind around it.  Every time I think about it, about the circumstances of it, I just feel a little more ill.  I had been hoping against hope that I was mistaken, but today everything was finally confirmed, every last shred of carefully tended hope was knocked away, and I was forced to face the truth of what is going on.

All that was left, then, was to say a few final words and press send.  And feel sick.  And wait for the next horror.

The Sun Also Rises

After watching Midnight in Paris Saturday, I was struck with the desire to reread some Hemingway, specifically The Sun Also Rises since there is reference to Zelda going off with a bullfighter in one of the scenes.  I got it on Kindle Sunday, and I finished the reread just now.

I guess I haven't read it in two or three years now, not since I took that course in Hemingway where we read all his works together.  I had forgotten so much of it.  I know that the last time I read it I didn't respond to it as I did this time.  There was something in it this time that hit just like a ten-pound sledge.

Maybe it's that I'm older now, and I have seen more of the nastiness people are capable of dishing out to each other as they are scrabbling to fill the empty spaces inside them.  Maybe that same aspect has allowed me to come to a place where I know a Brett, a Cohn, a Mike.  Perhaps when I was younger, I thought these people unrealistic.  I seem to remember my students saying something like that when we studied it together.  They're wrong, though.  I think that Hemingway has captured types fairly well.  Maybe we were all just too young to have encountered them yet.  I see horrible shadows of myself at times in Jake, willing to give up my own happiness for the happiness of the one I love and suffering because of it.

As for Hemingway's prose, I love it more now than I did even a few years ago.  I am not one of those people who say that his style is the only way to go, but perhaps because I do deal with developing writing so often (and you can consider that a euphemism if you like), I find the stripped-down sharpness in TSAR like a minimalist painting or traditional Japanese architecture, good because it is clean and strong, powerful because there is nothing to detract from its focus.

I have been rereading The Great Gatsby off and on routinely for years, but for some reason, TSAR hasn't been in on that rotation.  The last time I left it, I did not have this feeling of bittersweet love for it.  It might have been because I was teaching it at a stressful time.  Sometimes that colors a work for me.  For whatever reason, and for whatever reason my feelings toward this work have changed, I suspect this will now be one I go to more often.

(This is not to say that I love all Hemingway.  I still hate Catherine with a passion.  She doesn't get off that easily.  I can't forgive any woman who apologizes for the inconvenience of her own death or any writer who creates her.)

Waking Up

I'm trying to wake up.  I can't get the cobwebs to clear away this morning despite application of Diet Mountain Dew.  This is probably because of the freaking bizarre dreams I had all night.

They were mostly school related.  It doesn't take a genius to tell I'm anxious about going back.

I dreamed I had a room full of things other teachers had been looking for but that I had somehow overlooked and had not given to them, thus failing in one of my supervisory capabilities. Somehow their stuff had gotten mixed in with my stuff, and I had not found it.  They had needed it, asked for it, but I hadn't found it in time.

I dreamed that they asked me to move my classroom again.  This time, impossibly, the move was somehow to the room my old AP teacher from high school had.  I do not teach at the same school I attended, yet, somehow, by the magic of dreams, the two schools melded together, and I could walk down the stairs, turn a corner, and there was a version of that room, that hall there.  I do not even know what to make of that.

As I was trying to move my stuff, I dreamed that students from last year showed up to take an exam they claimed they had missed. They had been told they were permitted to take it now.  They did not understand  the material, and they sat in front of the test blankly for a long time.  They just became shadows in the desks.

I also came downstairs with a load of stuff and was for some reason outside in a courtyard area our school does not have but my old high school does, and a principal I had never seen came running past me on a walkie-talkie (all the admins at our schools carry these) with a set of keys.  He went to the door I was using and he locked it.  Then he came back to me, telling me he'd locked the building down and that it was my responsibility to find a way to get back in.  He walked off even though I was standing there with my arms loaded.

The scene switched and for some reason I was having my AP class on a football practice field.  I had all my stuff in a car.  I was missing half of my class.  I had no idea where they were.  I had all these kids in my room that I had never seen before who were earnestly scribbling things down.  At the end of the period, one of these kids I didn't know (he looked like he was about 12) came up and asked me for an essay topic handout to take with him.  He said that all my other kids were in the gym at a protest because the coaches were trying to cut a kid off the track team midseason and they felt like this was unfair.  The students I didn't know had been sent to cover their classes during the protest.  It was a system they'd worked out.

It just kept getting progressively stranger.  I finally got in my "new" classroom.  I had windows on both sides of the room, even the one with the interior hallway.  I could see the mountains of Japan out the hallway side....  People I know, colleagues, friends, former students, people dead and gone, dropped in and out of this thing like it was a major motion picture.  It was not a horror movie because there were no monsters or gore, but I have rarely felt so glad to wake up or so happy to be in my own little bedroom when I did.

I hate it when my brain gets cute with the things I'm worried about.  I can trace back a lot of what I saw.  Not all of it, but much of it. I miss harmless dreaming.

Happy New Year to You

Found on Neil Gaiman's Tumblr.  It says everything I think probably needs to be said.  I love you all and wish you the best.