Alif the Unseen

“A girl he loved had decided she did not love him--at least, not enough. How was such a problem usually addressed? Surely not with the clandestine exchange of books and computer surveillance and recourse to the jinn.” 
― G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen
_____________________

I saw this book mentioned on Twitter or Facebook by one of the NPR book bloggers, and I was curious enough based upon what they said to go find it on Amazon.  Once I read the full premise, I got a sample on my Kindle.  From that point I was pretty much hooked.

I've never read anything like Alif.  It's the story of a young man of Indian-Arab heritage who lives in an unnamed totalitarian Gulf emirate.  He has created a separate online life for himself.  He works as a programmer/hacker whose programs serve any organization fighting the restrictions of the government.

He has fallen in love with a beautiful, intelligent woman from a rich family.  When that relationship falls apart, he decides to use his computing skills to grant her last request of him, that she should never see him again.  What comes of his fit of anger and sadness is unexpected.  It will lead him into the world of the jinn, a world that has always lain side by side with his everyday world without his knowledge.

Alif is part political protest, part fairy tale.  Some of the events feel very current since it seems that hardly a week goes by without mention of some government who is seeking to control their people by controlling their access to the Internet.  The world of the jinn creeps up on the reader in the same way it creeps up on Alif and his companions.  By the time he's immersed in the deepest part of it, their city and way of living seems entirely possible.  Different, but possible.

I guess this book fits most neatly into the category of fantasy with a side-order of sci-fi.  That label is a bit misleading, though.  It spans other genres; bildungsroman, political theory, and philosophy are all there, too. There is a muted but still moving love story.  Issues of gender and cross-cultural communication are explored.

Then there's the hero himself.  Alif, like most of us, thinks his actions and his motivations are fairly good ones.    Even though he is selfish, careless with those who care for him, and self-isolated from the world around him, he thinks the way he's chosen to live is the right path. What he discovers is that reality has a way of stripping away illusion, even the ones we keep about ourselves.  This, then, is a story of a person becoming attuned to the real told through the profoundly imaginary.  It's lovely.

One of the most important things this book addresses is what it means to be free.  How can we keep ourselves free?  What should we do with freedom when we have it?  What is the price of freedom?  While this may seem trite, the way Alif deals with it is thought-provoking, especially in a time in which government surveillance of our online lives has been confirmed.  (Hi, PRISM.  Scan me.  Go ahead.  Scan me.)

This book is probably the best thing I've read this summer.  In fact, it's one of the best books I've read in quite awhile, period.  I would love to see some kind of sequel with more of the world of the jinn in it.  I think the possibility for that exists in a couple of ways.  I don't know if Ms. Wilson will pursue this storyline or not. What I do know is that as it stands, Alif the Unseen was a profoundly original work in a sea of copycat fiction.  It is very much worth your time.

First Blackberrying of the Year

After walking the dogs this afternoon, I walked over to the blackberry bramble at the edge of my pasture and looked over the current crop.  I picked a few, just a small handful, and came back inside.  Chewie, being Chewie, watched me pick the berries and eat them, and he started nibbling them off the bushes.  I laughed at him, and he stopped long enough to give me a giant toothy grin before returning to his efforts.  He's a strange dog, but he's all mine.

After dinner, I kept thinking about the blackberries. I decided that I would go up to our country place tomorrow and see if the brambles there were bearing yet.  Then I looked up some recipes on Pinterest.  This led to combing through my Granny's recipe box looking for her cobbler recipe.  I realized that I had to have more and that I didn't want to wait.

The beauty of summer is that the days linger gloriously.  Even though it was fairly late, the tops of the trees were still golden. Grabbing a leash and Chewie, I headed out to our place in the country and the tons and tons of blackberries that grow there. Chewie loves it there.  I had the windows down, and as soon as we came around the last curve before the gate to the property, he sniffed the air and started woofing softly.  We made our way down to the brambles, and I picked until it got too dark to ensure I wasn't about to step in the middle of a snake. Chewie and I found our way back to the car in the last blue-purple light of sunset and the dim glow of a fingernail moon.

Blackberries are tricky and imperious little devils.  They are not a "something for nothing" fruit.  There is nothing docile or generous about them.  They're primadonnas.    If you go to pick what they have produced, they are going to take from you as well.  Usually I get hung on one of the vines and cut my arm or hand open. I have always thought of it as the "blood sacrifice" required to complete the picking. Today, as I carefully reached around the thorns and plucked the ripe berries, I felt the waving tendrils of green grab at my shorts, tenaciously hook my tshirt, and finally one reached out and snagged a handful of my hair. It was surprisingly strong, and it required a little careful finesse to free myself.  If you flail once a bramble captures you, it's kind of like that plant Devil's Snare from Harry Potter - more and more of them grab hold making the situation worse. Once I managed to extricate myself, I apparently had paid my tithe.  Nothing else attacked me.

Chewie watched the whole thing from a safe distance.  He ran careful circles around the reach of the brambles, caused a large wild turkey to explode upwards into the treetops with a sound like a localized hurricane, rolled rapturously in the tall grass, and wore his nose off chasing scents.  Eventually, he flopped down and watched me, moving only when I went to another section of the bramble.  I offered him a berry I'd picked, but he apparently had his fill earlier.  He sniffed it, mouthed it, and spit it out before looking up at me with a hopeful wagging tail.  Apparently, he's decided he'd rather have his bacon treats instead.

In a fairly short time, I managed to fill a quarter of the gallon-sized ziplock bag I'd taken with me.  I brought the berries home, washed them, and put them in the refrigerator.  I don't know what I'll do with them.  I might indulge in one of the recipes I found.  I might make a mini-cobbler.  Probably, though, I'll just nibble them whole and savor that special taste of summer and home and deep woods pasture land.  That is probably special enough a recipe all on its own.

My Name Is Red

I've been working on My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk for about a week now in my continuing effort to learn more about the Ottoman Empire and Turkey in general.  Pamuk, a Nobel Prize winner, was recommended by one of the leaders of our trip, and My Name is Red in particular was specified as a good starting place for his work.  I got it on Kindle and headed into it.

I wasn't prepared for the journey that awaited me.  For general information, you can click through to the Wikipedia page. The novel deals with a community of artists in 16th century Istanbul, the miniaturists.  Each chapter is told by a different voice, but the main characters repeat throughout.  This reminded me a lot of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.  (I know.  I see links where there probably are none, the the similarities are remarkable.)  The chapters are short and intricate, like the very miniatures the characters are commissioned with creating.  At first, I had no idea what was going on and who was involved.  It starts very much in medias res, and the first voice you hear is actually the voice of a dead man.  Once I got used to the flow of the novel and started to figure out who was linked to whom, it was charming.

The work has so much to enjoy.  First of all, there is all the historical research that must have been involved.  The time period is described so clearly.  That, however, pales when compared to the technical aspect of its creation. I cannot imagine the difficulty of maintaining no fewer than twelve narrative voices, one of which is actually the "split personality" of another.  Each character has a distinct and realistic voice and view on the world. It's an amazing accomplishment to see the world through so many eyes.

Woven into the plot of murder and intrigue is a healthy dose of folklore, custom, and even costuming.  It was a perfect choice for me to read just now because it perfectly accompanied the course text and readings we had.  So many of the things the text described were humanized and made accessible through the story.  Stories about famous characters from folk tales, poetry, songs, patterns of behavior, even architecture is presented in such glorious detail.  Every chapter really was a little picture.

I have another book by Pamuk, his Istanbul, which is quite different, a set of memoirs of the city he grew up in and still lives in today.  I have a few other things I want to read first, but it's in my near future.  It will be interesting to see how he continues to reveal this place I am becoming increasingly more and more fascinated with.

Lightning (Bug and Other)

As I came home tonight, the sky was full of stars.  Suddenly, though, everything flickered.  The sky itself was green for seconds, parts of seconds, and then it plunged back into the deepest blue.  Lightning from the oncoming storm had ripped away the illusion of calm.

We're still too far away from whatever is coming to hear the thunder, but everything has that horrible stillness that happens right before a big rain, and the last two days, I've been sick in the bed with a migraine, so I am guessing that something epic is marching towards us.

I took the dogs out for a late evening stroll, and as we made our way through the pasture, thousands of little tiny flashes of light filled the low tree limbs and the underbrush.  The lightning bugs, usually to be found at the tops of the trees, were low because of the atmospheric pressure.  It looked like the edges of the woods had been strung with countless fairy lights, but even that beauty managed to be ominous because of the reason for its presence.

There are so many other things that rumble in the distance, flash and then are gone, before sweeping over us.  Of course, I've been reading about the protests in Turkey almost ceaselessly.  It started with a flash, a sudden moment of the people together, and now it has escalated into something widespread and lasting, a storm of some duration.  It's amazing.  I pray that it won't turn any bloodier than it already is.

I am so impressed by the way the protesters are behaving.  The news articles I've read say that everything is kept clean by the protesters themselves even though there are massive (and growing) numbers of them present, that they are sharing supplies and protection with each other, that they have the support of the people in the shops and in the police to the point that stores are opening to them for places of refuge and police are not reporting to work because they refuse to be a part of confronting them.  Even while the Prime Minister calls these protests "undemocratic," even his vice secretary is apologizing for the way they protests have been handled.  It seems that everyone except one is on the same side.  I've never seen anything like it.

The more I read and study of the past, the more fascinated I am with this present.  I pray that we still get to go.  I have to see this remarkable place and these remarkable people for myself.

Not Politics. Just Hope.

I've been watching the news on Turkey carefully the past couple of days.  I also follow some people on Instagram who are there in the protests, and I see things on Tumblr from them, too.  The images have been both profoundly distressing, police in riot gear, water cannons, clouds of tear gas,  people being carried away on stretchers, blood streaming down faces. The situation, something that began over saving a public park from allegedly corrupt development, has acted as a spark to an apparently vast powder keg of other issues and has spread all over the country.  The seams are coming apart in Turkey.

And yet, there have been other images that somehow give a kind of hope in the grimness, pictures of peaceful protesters holding up books to the police who stand behind them in riot gear, groups that normally do not have much to do with each other standing shoulder to shoulder.  These immediately pulled me back to what I've been reading in my course texts.  The great strength of the Ottoman Empire was in its tolerance and acceptance of "the other," according to the book we have been required to read.  Unlike most of the rest of medieval Europe, at its height, the Empire based worth on what you could do as much as where you were from or whom you worshipped.  Different did not have to mean evil or marked for destruction under their rule.  Instead, "different" mean exactly that, not the same, but not unworthy.  Even the "big three" religions managed to find a way to coexist there in what, when compared to the rest of the world at that time, can be considered to be mostly peaceful.  Not total equality or total freedom, but mostly peacful. It was not any sort of democratic or Utopian paradise, but it was something beyond the Inquisition and the pogroms.

That same idea of tolerance and unity seems to be showing up in these protesters.  One news article I read talked about how people from different ethnic groups, people from different regions, even people from rival soccer teams are coming together in these protests against the increasing strictness of the current government.  Even though the violence and the injuries that are accompanying them are terrible, there is something remarkable about that unification of differences.

As the readings for this course have made me more aware of the history of the Ottoman Empire, I have realized suddenly just how much the lands it used to control are still in flux, still searching for themselves in the wake of its decline.  Surely most of us probably think of nations as something permanent, something always there, even those of us living in a nation as new as this one.  The truth of it is that the people of Turkey (and everywhere else that the Ottomans once governed) are less than ninety years out of the rule of a government that held some of them, for better or for worse, for more than six centuries.  The powers of the West that carved the dead empire up into pieces and parcels for themselves after its demise have only prolonged the process of growth, of a necessary forging of identity.  Therefore, even though they are standing on ancient foundations, they are new construction, and probably we should not be surprised that they change as that process continues.

I very much hope that the protests in Turkey come to some form of peaceful and...well...right...resolution.  That may sound very naive.  It may actually be so.  I do not pretend to be wise enough to know what "right" is in this case.  It's not my land; they aren't my issues, even though one of the sources of unrest is the NATO presence on the Syrian border.  However, Turkey has been making great strides economically and a time of seemingly slow renaissance for its place in the world has started.  I think it would be terrible if that forward motion and self-definition were damaged by the usual suspects:  selfishness, powermongering, and pride.  Again, I will say that I don't know who is right and who needs to change in this moment.   I hope that, even as controversial as it might be, the legacy of that seven-hundred-year old empire can give all that was good and wise of unity and coexistence to its children and allow its darkness and bloodshed to fall away.

Summer

...and the incredible need to get out of here.  Summer.  The season where I'm rested enough to be restless.  Summer.  The time when I'm still enough to feel the lack of motion most acutely.

My parents are watching me out of the corners of their eyes again.  I don't know exactly what has brought on this new phase of my life.  They seem...I don't know...scared of what I'm going to do.  I am carrying on like I always do.  I don't perceive that I am acting any differently than usual, except of course for the fact that I'm not stressed out of my mind and I'm getting plenty of sleep.

I'm not sure what it is that they're scared I'm going to do.  Quit my job?  Purchase a big-engined fast-moving car and take off?  Shack up with somebody?  Get a giant dragon tattoo that covers my entire back? Leave and never come back?

Ah.  That last one. Maybe it's that last one.

I have a streak of pure Gypsy in my feet, that need to travel, get out, see "other where," see "other who"; they're absolutely happy if they don't even have to go in to town to Wal-Mart regularly. Maybe this is where the problem lies.

I don't know.  I just feel nervous, like I've somehow broken some kind of code I was unaware even existed, and now I must be, as Emily Dickinson said, "handled with a chain."  I hate that feeling of walking on eggshells, especially when I don't know how they got underfoot to start with.

Walking

The walls started to close in on me this afternoon.  I've been working on my book for the Ottoman Cultures seminar for the past two days, and even though it's been fascinating, I needed to get out.  I finished the text, got out my sneakers, and headed outside.

In addition to the need to get out of the chair and do something, I needed to clear my head.  Right now, it's going around and around in useless circles over an issue about which I can do nothing.  It's one of those things that I'm just going to have to accept, but it's hard for me to do that right now.  I'm assuming time will do what it always does, give me perspective and some relief (although this might be one of those Edna St. Vincent Millay "Time Does Not Bring Relief" moments...).

I haven't gone out walking in a long time.  In the afternoons when I've come home from school, I have felt too tired to care.  Today, though, it seemed like the right thing to do.

I didn't walk far, maybe a mile or so, but it is amazing how much peace can be found in movement.  As I walked, I focused on the simple act of putting feet down and picking them up.  I noticed the traffic, the various plants blooming, the red-tailed hawk that glided lazily from its hunting perch on the powerline in the pasture to the edge of the woods and disappeared.  I was able to put away the unsolvable thing as long as I was moving.

Now I'm back, and after a long hot shower, I am watching TV.  Maybe if I do this often enough, I can subjugate everything else and keep that red-tailed hawk calm instead.

A Million Little Things

It's amazing to me how much stuff slips through the cracks during the school year.  Today, I vacuumed, steam cleaned, washed all my bedding down to the mattress and sunned the feather mattress, threw out enough junk and old mail to half fill a giant trash bag (this may be the week the trash men lynch me), rearranged my living room, put slip covers back on my couches, swapped out a small bookcase for a much larger one, and renewed two magazine subscriptions that had lapsed.

The sad part is that I'm only about halfway done with all the things I need to take care of urgently.  Before I can get to the things that can wait but need to be done (like my closet.  oh my god.  my closet....), I have to get the house to a place where I wouldn't be ashamed if somebody came into it.  I probably have one more day of heavy cleaning before it will come to that point.  Then I'll just be sorting through the piles I try so HARD not to make during the school year but that always seem to accumulate on the flat surfaces anyway.

At some point, I have to stop and do a lot of reading for Turkey.  Hey, you know what?  This is feeling a LOT like the school year, after all.  (sigh)  Well, I have a pile of clean sheets I need to get out of the dryer so I can reassemble my bed.

Basic Research

"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." ~ Wernher von Braun

This amused the heck out of me.  I think I must do craploads of "basic research."

Little Red Blooms

I saw them when I got out of the car at Wal-Mart.  Their blue vests and hats marked them as did their gesture of trying to hand something to the people passing by.  I could see the little flickering of red in their hands.  I felt something inside me tighten up, and I reached for my wallet, gritted my teeth.  It was Memorial Day, and the Buddy Poppies were out again.

As you can see from the picture, I do not object to the Buddy Poppies.  I buy at least one every year.  Whenever I see the American Legion or the DAV handing them out, I always contribute.  The thing that made that little spring inside my clockwork heart wind tighter was what these tiny red blossoms mean to me.

Almost every male member of my family has served in the military.  Both my grandfathers were WWII veterans, one almost freezing to death in Italy while the other went all over the place loading bombs onto planes.  My dad was sent to Vietnam while he was in the Coast Guard. My uncles were Vietnam-era Marines; one of them also served in the Coast Guard after his tour with the Corps ended.

It has been just a little less than a year since I lost the uncle who served in both branches, my Uncle Gary.  He spent the last years of his life in a veterans' care facility in Kosciusko after having a major stroke that left him partially paralyzed on one side.  For whatever reason, even though there are so many veterans in my life, those little red flowers always make me think of him.

I miss him.  Even though at the end, his condition and his medication kept him from being mentally sharp, I miss going to see him and talking with him.  Today, seeing those little flowers again brought the end of it back, the long hours in the hospital waiting room, the last time I saw him.

I believe in donating to the men who hand the poppies out.  They are men who served our country and who continue to serve it still by making sure our veterans are taken care of.  They are men like my grandfathers, like my dad, like my uncle, like my friends, like my students, like all those men and women who have left behind comfort and safety to do what was needed.  Their sacrifices deserve to be remembered, whether those sacrifices were physical on the field of combat or those much-harder-to-spot renderings of psychological health, family closeness, peaceful dreams at night.  I cannot do much about most of these things.  I can, however, do this one little thing, show my respect in this one way.  Maybe it means something.

Through Linoleum

"They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze.  They should photograph me through linoleum." ~ Tallulah Bankhead

Exactly.

Weary, Stale, Flat, and Unprofitable

O God, God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
~ Hamlet I.ii. 132-134.
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There's sun this afternoon, but the greyness I woke up to better suited my mood.  I can't shake this bone deep sadness. Everything seems totally useless.  As always, Hamlet says it better than I can.

I wish I could just put my dogs in my car and drive until there was no more road left.  Maybe somewhere along the way, there would be something to take it all away.  Maybe if I drove fast enough, I could leave it behind, chasing after me like an old dog snapping at my rear wheels.

Or maybe I will just sink into Istanbul, dissolve there, turn into a section of a golden-tiled mosaic.  I feel as old, as trapped, as fragile, as unreal as any Byzantine wall.  Maybe if I was frozen there, then this feeling currently gnashing its pointed teeth on my soul would no longer be able to rip me apart.

They say as you get older, wisdom and perspective are supposed to come.  I wish that a lessening of feeling came with it, too.  I wish my heart was marble, cold, hard, and unalterable, requiring the strike of a hammer and a chisel to harm it.  As it stands, it's too easily damaged, too easily hurt.

Clean

One of my favorite sensations in the world is to slip between cool cotton sheets, clean and dry after taking a long, hot shower.  It earns double-wonder points if the bed has a freshly sunned and fluffed feather mattress on it and if the sheets are right out of the dryer and still fragrant with fabric softener.  This seems like a little thing, I'm sure, but sometimes the little things are the best things.

I still remember after Katrina when I had no power for two weeks.  Although I had running water, the hot summer and the hard work of trying to clear all the downed trees from my yard covered me in sweat constantly.  In the evenings when the sun had gone down and things cooled off somewhat, I would stumble into my bathroom and take a cold shower by the light of a kerosene lantern.  The tepid water did get me clean, did help bring down the infernal temperature somewhat, but every time I slid under it, I felt a little horrible.  When my parents got their power back, we had a meal that wasn't from a can and then I took a long shower at their house.  I think I cried.

I also remember my first chaotic night in Costa Rica, the delayed flight, the drunk host family who came to get me in a car too small for two people (there were five of us in it), the breakdown and walking, and then, finally, after all of that, a really scary electric showerhead designed to heat the water as it came through that I did not know how to operate.  I tried and tried to get hot water out of it, and I finally just jumped under the freezing cold stream enough to wash the day of travel off me before burrowing in beneath insufficient covers to shiver the rest of the night away.

In many cultures, bathing is a ritual, an important part of daily life.  Japan was wonderful for this.  I still want one of the gas water heaters like I had there, one that heated as much water as you wanted on demand.  I could literally have showered forever there if I had the money to pay the bills....  This isn't even bringing in the happiness of a bathtub with enough hot water to fill it up to my chin.

More than any of these, though, is a happier memory of Costa Rica from my second trip there.  After a tremendously long day painting, digging septic fields, and pushing large trucks out of deep mud, we were taken to the Tabacon Spa whose hot springs were heated and enriched by Arenal, one of the most active volcanoes in the world.  I remember they had pools and miniature water falls where you could sit and stare up at the almost full moon while the hot water pounded down on your aching back and shoulders.  It was beyond wonderful.

I'm looking forward to trying the culture of the hamam while I'm in Turkey.  I did the community baths in Japan a couple of times, and it was very nice, very relaxing.  I have been reading up on etiquette for this, and  while I have no idea if I want to go be the big, odd foreigner again (sometimes that gets really old), it sounds like something I'll enjoy.  Maybe it will be another memory to add to this rather odd collection of cleanliness.

Orphaned Pencils

Like most people, I have a lot of little idiosyncrasies.  I look for four-leaf clovers every time I walk through a patch while I'm walking my dogs.  I collect bobbleheads when I travel.  My favorite clothing is a literary tshirt.  I always carry a fancy vintage handkerchief.  Added to all these other oddities, I am also a rescuer of orphaned pencils.  

There is something heartbreaking about an abandoned pencil.  I find them frequently on the floor of my classroom, sometimes almost used up, sometimes barely sharpened.  I always scoop them up and put them in a brown ceramic cylinder some student made in Ceramics and left in my room one year.  I call it the lost pencil cup.  Students know to look there for something to write with before they ask me about it.

I think the sadness for me comes from seeing a tool so closely related to all the things my heart holds most dear simply cast aside.  There's power in a pencil, power to change the world, power to change someone's mind, power to change oneself.

When a student comes to class and has no pencil every day, there is a kind of hopelessness to it.  It's like seeing someone who needs to put out a destructive blaze but who has no bucket or hose.  They simply lack the right equipment to save themselves.

A pencil lets a person draw a picture to clarify, solve a math problem, make a list.  It allows a poem to be created, things done or cast aside to be crossed off, dots to be connected.  There is a universe encased in a slim wooden or plastic sheath, infinitely malleable and portable.

There's a quote in You've Got Mail about bouquets of freshly-sharpened pencils.  I always smile when I see that part because I know that feeling.  There really *is* something about a brand new pencil.  They're among my favorite school supplies.

There's something to be said about the old ones, too, though.  When you see a pencil that is only as long as your little finger, that has its eraser gone, even one with the indentations made by teeth or the impact against the edge of a desk or table, you're looking at a battle-scarred veteran of the war against idiocy and ignorance.  It deserves the chance to continue its service.

Today after the last bell, I walked around my room and tidied everything up as I always do.  Under one of the desks in the back, I found one of these forlorn instruments.  Except for its eraser, it had almost no use.  I picked it up, carried it over to the turn-in table, placed it next to the others in the cup.  I gathered all my belongings and headed down the stairs to my car.  On the way, another pencil was sitting on the end of our wide wooden banisters, almost as though it was just waiting for me.  I smiled, tucked it in the back pocket of my school work bag.  Monday, it can join the assembly of orphaned pencils waiting a second chance at usefulness.

Bonfire

You got a lot of lovers with star-crossed wrists

They keep a candle burning on the corner you kissed.

One day I might die, until then there's too much to do

But I'll keep a bonfire for you.

I've seen the pretty boys that you're keeping around

I know how it goes, I've got a girl in town.

And she likes me enough to do what I like to do.

But, I'll keep a bonfire for you.

Let the other lovers talk about who carries the torch

Let them talk about the beauty that they carry it for

Let the other lovers talk about who got what

And who got burned and who got cut

I'll be in the orchard when you get tired

Day after day of the shouts from the choir

Eating the apples and eating the peaches, too

And waiting by my bonfire for you.

In the dark anybody will do for love

But you're the only one I want when the sun comes up

No burning ball of fire set in the sky will do

Next to my bonfire for you.

Let the other lovers talk about who carries the torch

Let them talk about the beauty that they carry it for

Let the other lovers talk about who got what

And who got burned and who got cut

I need a little motion, need a little relief

I get a little lonely at the end of the week

And I want it so bad and if you want it so bad, too

I'll be over here with my bonfire for you.

You got a lot of lovers with star-crossed wrists

They keep a candle burning on the corner you kissed.

One day I might die, until then there's too much to do

But I'll keep a bonfire for you.

~ "Bonfire" - Josh Ritter

________

I love just about everything I've heard by Ritter, but there are certain songs of his that always feel like they were more or less stolen right out of my own thoughts.  (Of course, if this is the case, he's dressing them up in prettier clothing than they had when they were with me.  Heh.)

This song, "Bonfire," is one of those I identify with closely.  Switch some genders here and there, and it's just about the situation I find myself in.  I like the fact that he's not pining and following. Others might thrive on the drama of "star-crossed wrists," but I, like the speaker in the song, am just much more comfortable taking care of life, hanging out in the orchard.

 There is tremendous personal truth for me in the line "One day I might die, until then there's too much to do."  I'm busy.  I have a ridiculous schedule and probably will for the rest of my life.  It's not conducive to marriage or happy homelife.  I've known that for a long time.  Who would put up with me leaving early in the morning and not coming home until after 6:00 most nights?  Who would willingly suffer the slings and arrows of being married to a teacher?  I'm not sure that I really expect anybody to.

That doesn't really prevent me from keeping that bonfire going.  Just because I don't think it will work out doesn't seem to be a deterrent to feeling.  I understand that "bonfire" level of desire all too well.  Candles are all well and good; they give some light and a certain aura of romance, I suppose. However, a candle's lifespan is limited before the match ever touches the wick.  I think a lot of relationships have that same quality. When you think about love, which would you really rather have - the temporary glamor, beauty of limited use and duration, or the permanent that provides on so many different levels?  

Bonfires may require work to make and work to keep them going but they give more heat, more light, more protection from all those things that hunt in the night. They are actually functional rather than decorative.  The metaphor is perfect, then.  Who wants a purely decorative love?  Is it really love at all? The speaker says no.  He has a girl whom he likes and who likes him well enough to "do what [he] likes to do," but this is presented as a necessity, a place-holder.  It's not the real deal, and he's not pretending that it is. He knows good and well he's only got a candle at the present.

This is the place the speaker and I diverge.  I'm not interested in candles.  I don't have the time for them.  I'm only interested in bonfires, I guess.  In fact, that metaphor can go right next to the Sonnet 116 ones as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway....  As you can tell, I've English Teachered this song more than once in my head.  This is probably a lot more thought than it was ever intended to evoke.  (Sorry for beating your song to death, Josh Ritter.)  This is almost certainly more thought than you really wanted to read.  For some reason, though, this was the thing I needed to say just now, so, as always, caveat emptor.  And now, I have some papers to grade and a bonfire to tend.

Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

I bought my tickets for Turkey yesterday.   I shopped around, tried to use my SkyMiles to defray the cost of the ticket, and finally just clicked "Purchase" with no small amount of both trepidation and relief.  It's done.  When you click the big green button, it's done.

I still can't believe it, though.  The more I read and discover, the more fantastic it all seems.  I got my main course textbook from Primary Source last week, and I looked at it some last night.  I also got on our course Moodle and started meeting the people I'm going to be traveling with.  As usual, I'm the only person from the Deep South.  Well.  Every trip needs a token chick from MS, right?  In all seriousness, it looks like it will be a good mix of disciplines, grade levels, and parts of the country.

I also started digging through the list of "extras" one of the course instructors put up.  I ordered a couple of used copies of some books about Istanbul/Ottoman Turkey from Amazon, and I got one of Orham Pamuk's novels on my Kindle.  I can see that what I'm supposed to be doing and what I want to be doing are going to be at war with each other for the next few weeks.  (So what else is new, right?)

One of my last purchases, a whim I indulged after somebody else brought it up again on FB, was the They Might Be Giants song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)."  I remember that song from a million years ago.  C. and I laughed about it when we were in Venice and I was still waiting to find out whether or not I had gotten in for this institute.  It's a very silly song, but somehow it was the perfect thing to celebrate.  It feels very, very good to have this ticket, something to hold on to in the rough week ahead of me.

I'm now running very late to start my day, but it's worth it.  If you haven't heard this song or heard it in a long time, I leave it here to get stuck in your head, too.  Enjoy.

Lost Day

Yesterday was so beautiful.  Shame I missed most of it.

I woke up, took the dogs out, settled in for a little breakfast reading on the couch.  I had big plans to get much done.  I had phone calls to make, jeans to wash, floors to vacuum.  Not one bit of that got done.

My head started slamming me early, and I ignored it because I'm sick and tired of it.  I've done nothing but hurt all week.  I know it's been due to stress and weather, but I'm really, really worn out from it.  I know that ignoring it was not the best response, but I could not stand the thought of taking a Maxalt.  Since it was not to a level that was making me scream yet, I also thought it might back off.

You think after all this time, I would have learned....

I took a nap in an effort to shake it, intending to get up refreshed and pain-free and take care of my list.  No dice.  When I woke up, I was disoriented and sick.  Two hours later, I *was* screaming.

I took a Maxalt, and when that didn't work, I took the phenergan.  That, of course, was the game-ender.  Nothing happens after phenergan takes the field.  Even it, though, didn't kill the pain.  Every time I woke up, my head was hurting.  I would just roll over and wait for unconsciousness to slide back over me again.  The only thing I had to deal with while I was asleep was the Hell of Dreams from all the things kicking up sediment in my mind.  I won't even go into the details here.  I am still hoping that they will fade soon so I can forget them.

I'm better today.  I still can't tell if it's going to come back or not.  If it does, and if it won't stop hurting me, I think I'm going to have to call my doctor.  Probably this is just what I think it is, too much stress and weather shifting too fast, but I can't take much more of it.

The thing that makes me so mad about all of it is that I just lost a day.  It happens so much lately.  I have plans, I have things I need to do, and WHAM, suddenly I'm incapacitated.  There has to be something better than this.  I hate it.

Things They Don't Tell Teachers to Get in Education Classes

I was in OfficeThing Friday night making a last-minute, last-of-the-year provisioning run.  As I threw things in my cart and ran through the inventory of frequently-used supplies mentally to see if I was forgetting anything, I thought to myself, "This is just another one of those things they don't tell preservice teachers:  Friday nights involve trips to OfficeThing."

And then I started thinking of all the things I have that are "outside of the usual" that make life easier. Consider this blog a public service message.

1.  A small personal heat-seal laminator - You can get one for about $30 if you pay attention.  Mine came from Wal-Mart and was on sale.  I use it for tons of things from making ID cards for my National Honor Society Officers to protecting bell schedules and labels for things.  I still have my large posters done in the library because of size, but for all the little stuff, I do that myself.

2.  Self-adhesive magnet discs - You can buy them from Wal-Mart or a craft store, but I find the best value to be online.  I use them for countless things.  They turn anything into something easily hung and easily removed.  I hang notices, labels, posters, the term cards that compose my word wall, instruction signs, everything really.  I don't have to fight stick-tac (which only sticks SOMETIMES or FOREVER), and it makes it easy and fast to change things out.

3.  Ceiling Hanglars - (yes.  that is their real name.)  Almost every classroom now has drop in "grid" ceilings. If your doesn't, these are of no use to you.  If it DOES, then these are a display/decoration dream-come-true.  I use them to suspend artifacts from my travels, mobiles, and tons and tons of student projects.  Again, this is about easy-up, easy-down with no damage to the fixtures.  Everybody loves the fact that I've used student work to decorate, too.

4.  Command Velcro Strips - I'm not sure that this is the right name for these.  They have a plastic surface that meshes with and holds to another similar surface, so I am calling them that.  They might be picture-hanger strips.  Again, no-damage hanging is the goal.  I found these and tried them for some things I wanted to put on my plastered walls.  They work like a charm.  No nails.  No mess.  They go right up and come right down perfectly.  They hold fairly heavy frames, too.

5.  A small plastic box each of Sharpies, Post-its, pens of a different color (green/purple), and highlighters - My students use these all the time, but some of them either cannot keep up with them or can't seem to get around to getting them.  It's easier to have them on-hand and easy-to-access than to fuss or hold up an activity because of their lack.  I use fliptop plastic boxes that I think were actually made for cds or something.  They hold a lot of each thing. I put them out when we need to use them, and the students (with the exception of one particular class awhile back) have always been very good to use what's needed and return it at the end of class.  No fuss, no hassle.

6.  Index cards - millions and millions of them.  I use all sizes.  The 3X5 blanks are fabulous for quick notes/passes/etc and also exit slips.  4X6 is what I put my word wall elements on.  5X8 is what I use for instructions, labels, and my "quote wall" of interesting student sentences from their papers, etc.

7.  Endless plastic baskets from Dollar Tree - I prefer the ones that are colored vinyl with a metal frame.  I use them for every kind of thing.  If we need to draw strips to choose something, I cut them up and put them in a basket.  If I need to put candy out for Parent-Teacher Conferences, I put it in a basket.  I have one for completed exit slips, one to collect the pieces of a bulletin board my students are creating and one to hold extra blanks.  I use one to hold student project CDs as they're turned in.  They're just good for organization.

8.  A small bookshelf stereo system - I have my laptop hooked up to mine, and whenever we watch movies or listen to Hamlet, the sound is crisp and clear.  I show YouTube videos.  We do a version of "musical chairs" involving walking until the music stops and picking a poem taped to a chair.  I have my students do multimedia projects often, and even if the recording wasn't the best in the world, we still hear.  I use it to play music while they write and to play textbook supplemental CDs of professional readers or original authors presenting the work we're dealing with.  During my planning period and after school, I use it just for me.  I don't see how anybody manages with just a pair of computer speakers.    

9. A scented wax warmer - You have to be careful with this one, but classrooms can be stinky places.  Since science has proven that smell influences mood, I think this is something important to deal with.  I said that you have to be careful with it, and I mean that, because if the fragrance is heavy or cloying, it can give those with allergies or asthma big problems.  I always stick with things that are clean (citrus or lavender) or at least non-floral (apple cinnamon, vanilla, sandalwood), and I have never had a problem with it.  The students seem to like coming in to it, too.

10.  A tape dispenser, a stapler, and a 3-hole punch for at least two "stations" in your room - unless you want kids constantly at your desk for stuff, put it out for them elsewhere.  I have two sets of the basics out on two sides of my room.  When not in use, it sits neatly on a Dollar Tree silver serving tray.  One set is near the printer.  One set is next to the turn-in baskets.  This works really well.

11.  A pass just for the bathroom - I fabricated mine from a cheap unpainted wooden door hanger, painted it black, and put a tiny silver cutout of a man (like the standard men's room icon) on one side and a tiny silver cut out of a woman on the other.  I don't like to let the "big pass" our school issues us out of my sight very often since sometimes students just wander around with them.  With the bathroom pass, it's really obvious they're not supposed to be anywhere but the restroom.

12.  A laser printer - I actually have two now because I have a laptop cart in my room.  Mine is not a $400 job; it's a fairly inexpensive Brother.  It was some of the best money I've ever spent because where I used to go through two or three ink jet cartridges a month, I now go through toner about every other month for about the same money.  It also duplexes, meaning that if I get in a bind to print something off in the morning, I don't have to fight my way to the copying machine.  I love it.  The extra for the laptop cart can't be praised enough, either.  It's set up wirelessly, and so everybody can print to it from the laptops, no muss (as long as our network is up), no fuss.

13.  Plastic shower curtains and small "cafe" rods - A shower curtain can hide a multitude of sins on a big bookshelf.  Just saying.  I put mine up with small extendable cafe rods that are supported by a Command hook on either end.  They keep all my supply and book shelves looking neat even when they are really not and give my classroom the illusion of neatness when it's just not possible to have the reality.

Yeah.  Well, if you're not a teacher, this probably bored the crap out of you.  However, I've been thinking about this list for awhile, and I wanted to share it.  I probably have left off some things that others consider to be essential.  That just means they get to make lists of their own.

Chewie Lives

Yesterday, I got mostly through a faculty meeting when a headache waylaid me.  I staggered upstairs through disgustingly-glorious sunlight to my Maxalt.  I took one and, per our usual routine, called to let my Mom know I'd had to take the big drugs.

She was out-of-breath, and once I managed to make my broken brain and her frantic speech connect, I understood that Chewie had gotten injured on his afternoon walk, and she was taking him to the vet.  I got off the phone and managed to drag myself home.  (Once again, recitations of "To Be or Not to Be" helped me focus.)

When I got home, I fell down.  Then I was unconscious for three or four hours.  When I woke up, Mom was sitting on the foot of my bed.  She had just gotten home from the vet. Chewie hadn't just been injured.  He'd been bitten by a snake.

He was just out doing his usual big fluffy white dog thing, and Mom said she saw him spring sideways in a giant leap.   By the time she got him back to the house, he was dragging his front paw and moving with great difficulty.  Mom never saw the snake.

The vet kept him overnight for medication and observation.  Roux walked around the house with huge eyes looking for him.  She kept coming over to me and hugging me as she does when she needs a little extra comfort.  Even the cats (who do not like him, even a little) searched for him.  When I put Roux up for the night, she seemed so sad sitting next to Chewie's empty crate.  This morning when I walked her and Yelldo, they were both very droopy.

I had another migraine today, but by the time I got home, Chewie was back.  He will need more medicine and more care.  He's restricted as far as his level of activity.  There will be no deep-woods foraging for him for a couple of weeks.  He's exceptionally lucky, though.  Mom told me that our vet had two dogs brought in yesterday with snakebite.  The other one didn't make it.

I am looking over at him right now.  He's lying in the floor being Chewie.  He's had pizza crust (one of his favorite things) and as many hugs and pats as he desires.  Even in my current state of semi-incapacitation, I am so happy to see him.  My big furry white dog child is going to be okay.  Everything else in the world can rock on however it wants to.

Rain

I woke up to the sound of rain, the gentle susurration of water slipping across the leaves of the live oak, falling down from the shingles of the roof, cascading onto the little wooden staircase leading from the south porch.  The pearl-grey half-light of cloud-shrouded skies made every shade of green outside the window somehow more intense that even full sun.

I wanted you to be there.  I would take your hand, and we'd walk out across the sparkling new-mown yard, heedless of the cool rain coming down.  Under tulip poplars still carrying their yellow-green and orange cups, you'd pull me into your arms, and I am quite sure that the tears slipping down my cheeks would mix in with the rain and go unnoticed.

I'm so very tired, and I've missed you so very much, you see.  I see you everywhere.  You hide in unexpected corners of daily routine.  You are in most of my books, just waiting for the unwary turn of a page.  You're in the big black crows that I see everywhere, clever-eyed and beautiful.  You're in the lyrics of every other song.  You're in the rumble of the thunder.  You're in the rain.

And this is maudlin, sentimental and overdone.  I dislike it even as I'm writing it.  Tomorrow, the sun will be out, and I will not be so full of that all-pervasive greyness that makes me wish.  Tomorrow, the armor of routine will insulate me, cut me off from everything not necessary to survive.  This does not mean, however, that if you were to appear on my doorstep right now, broad shoulders and hair dampened with this rain, that I would not step outside to meet you with open arms.

Busted Mainspring

I'm literally shaking.  Little shivers are running through me from time to time.  I suspect I've just finally hit the bottom of the well.

This week has been one of the most challenging I can remember.  Little crisis after little crisis, responsibility after responsibility, need after need have piled up with feather-like touches.  Feathers should be harmless, right?  It's worth noting that enough feathers can kill, suffocate, crush, just like any other thing.

There's more to write, but I don't feel like typing it.  I think a bed and some cats are what is called for here.

The Weekend in Review

It's almost time to end this weekend, but I'm clinging tenaciously to the last few minutes before I'll be forced to let it go.  These days slip away so quickly.  I swear time moves differently on Saturday and Sunday.

I've been outside a good deal the past two days, not really doing anything but enjoying the rare bright cool weather we've been having.  The temperature was delicious.  Lying in my hammock or sitting in my chair and staring up into the shifting light of the tulip poplar canopy seemed to be the right way to spend time.  I have done a lot of reading lately; I'm on a Harry Potter kick and reread three of them this weekend.

Today, I was the sole form of music for the morning service since everybody else was gone here or there, and after that, I didn't feel like doing anything else complicated.  So I didn't.  I did a little light laundry, a lot of reading.  I refilled bird feeders, petted dogs.  I studiously ignored the wreck and ruin around me.  After the hell that was last week and the dread of the one to come, I needed time with no one making demands on me, no job to be done, nobody to support, just me.  Sooner or later, it will all catch up to me, and I'll have to spend a lot of time putting everything to rights, but today, I just couldn't face it.

So maybe it's no real wonder I'm resisting the inevitable.  I wish there were a job somewhere that involved reading and sitting in the sun for fantastic amounts of money.  If dogs could be thrown in, then I think I'd take it.  As it stands, though, I've finally overcome inertia and forced myself to take care of the last bit of procrastinated work that had to be done tonight, and I guess it's time to brush my teeth and turn out the lights....

Sing to the Moon - Laura Mvula

I stumbled over Laura Mvula last week when her album was on NPR's First Listen.  I have more or less become obsessed with it since then.  The whole album is in every way fantastic.  Right now, though, this is my favorite song.  The words are beautiful as are the images.  It touched me very personally, so I wanted to share it here.
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(Verse)
Hey there you, shattered in a thousand pieces
Weeping in the darkest nights.
Hey there you, try to stand up on your own two feet
And stumble into the sky.

(Pre-Chorus)
When the lights go out and you’re on your own
How you’re gonna make it through till the morning sun?

(Chorus)
Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, lead you to the other side.
Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, heaven’s gonna turn the time.

(Verse)
Hey there you, looking for a brighter season
Need to lay your burden down.
Hey there you, drowning in a hopeless feeling,
Buried under deeper ground.

(Pre-Chorus)
When the lights go out it’s a waiting game.
Never gonna see a day when your world will change.

(Chorus)
Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, lead you to the other side.
Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, heaven’s gonna turn the time.

Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, lead you to the other side.
Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, heaven’s gonna turn the time.

A Week Full of Crap

This week started with the tax debacle on Monday and continued to roll right over me until it was gone.  I won't detail all of it.  There's just too much.  Today alone is worth three or four blogs.  The crowning event happened this afternoon after school.  

I took a necklace of mine that had broken to a jeweler for repair.  While I was there, I had them look at my rose of sharon ring.  It has been catching everything lately.  When the lady looked at it, she started pointing out problems and finished by telling me that I needed to put the ring in a drawer and not wear it except for "special."  It's too fragile and too old, apparently, to withstand repair.  

I'm heartbroken.  I blogged about this ring earlier, so don't want to repeat, but it's so much more than a circle of metal to me.  My grandmother gave me money, my parents gave me money, and I used part of the paycheck from the first job I ever had to pay for the rest.  It represents my family as a whole.  I have worn it every single day (barring international travel) since I got it.  It makes me happy each and every single time I look down at it.  Now I have to put it away, and it's like something I loved has died.

My finger itches from not having the ring on.  I keep feeling it with my thumb, probing for the band that should be there.  But there's nothing.  Each time I realize why, it makes me sad all over again. 

I am sure that there are other rings in the world, but none of them will be *mine*.  It is also true that it is just a little thing, not earthshattering at all, but nevertheless, to me it matters.  It's just one more thing of mine that I love but cannot do anything to heal or better.  It's just one more precious piece of me that has gone bad and can't be reclaimed.  

I am rapidly losing the ability to hide everything under a neat curtain of positive thinking and Noh smiles. The lost and the broken are destroying me.

It's Tax Day!

(insert the obscenity of your choice here.)

About 3:45 today, I still hadn't heard from my tax service, so I made one last phone call hoping to get through during what is the busiest last-minute dance between simple serf and federal overlord.  I finally got something other than a busy signal, was told everything was waiting, packed my bags and headed to pick up my taxes as fast as my little car could carry me.

I hadn't had the courage to ask what the damage would be on the phone.  I didn't feel that I could stand it if I owed much.  I have no money right now, debts everywhere and only tiny trickles of income.

When I sat down, I knew from the expression on my accountant's face that the news was not a return.  And it wasn't.  It really wasn't.  The amount would have been negligible for many people I know.  For me, it started those little shivers of full-scale panic moving under what I was desperately trying to remain a calm facade.

I held it together long enough to  write two checks which I had nothing in the bank to cover.  I held it long enough to walk across the street to the local post office where the register was locking up and causing delays.  I held it together long enough to get back across the street and into my car, to get my vehicle pointed toward home.

Then all those steel rivets sheered away, and I fell apart.

I cried so hard that I couldn't see the road.  I was shaking so hard that the only thing keeping me from falling over in the seat was the white-knuckled grip on my steering wheel.  All I could think of was that I was working so hard, trying to meet all my responsibilities, and the result of that was....nothing.  No forward motion.  Nothing gained.  Only a big finger waggling smack from the government at the end of the year.  Only a request for money I don't have.  I passed a cemetery during that trip and saw a sign on its chainlink fence advertising the cost of a plot.  I remember thinking, "My God.  It even costs money to die.  I don't even have enough money to die..."

I managed to get to Mom and Dad's, and I sat with them a long time.  I moved money from the account intended to pay for my plane ticket to Turkey, very nearly emptying it, and I felt my stomach turn over.  The debt to the nation is paid.  As to how I am ever going to find the money now to go to Turkey this summer, I have absolutely no idea.  Right now, it seems more remote than the face of the moon.

Now I'm just waiting for a night of nightmares, and all will be complete.

Little Things

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys.  If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.  ~Fyodor Dostoevsky

Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment - a little makes the way of the best happiness.  ~Frederich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

Be happy.  It's one way of being wise.  ~Colette
_______________________________________________________

Little things make me happy.  I'm pretty sure this is the best way to be.  Here is a list of some of the small things that have brought me joy lately.

• indigo buntings - I looked outside my window yesterday to see a small sea of brilliant blue birds.  I thought they were bluebirds at first, but as I looked at them, I realized they were something quite different.  All of my feeders were empty, courtesy of my usual contingent of feathered and furred friends, so I went to Walmart to buy 40 lbs of seed to refill everything.  I don't know how long they'll be here, but I want them to have food while they are.
• buttermilk - Mom brought me a carton of buttermilk the other day.  I always forget how much I love it.  Glass by glass, I've been enjoying the tartness of it.  I need to get it more often.
• shiny nail polish - If I have a retail weakness, it has to be for shiny nail polish. Every time I go by a display, I stop and look.  It's not like I don't have more than enough to last me the rest of my life.  Somehow, though, there's always another cool color.  
• my cast iron Lodge pizza pan - I've made homemade pizza for years and years, and I've had tons of different pans.  A few months ago, I decided to splurge on a cast iron one made by Lodge.  I love cooking in cast iron; nothing makes better fried chicken or cornbread than a cast iron skillet.  I didn't know what to expect from it, but it makes some of the best pizza I've ever turned out.  It does something to the crust that makes it fantastic.
• waking up to rain - Even though it can be really horrible when I know I have to get out and do stuff in it, waking up to the sound of rain is soothing.  This morning, I woke up at 4:00, something that's not unusual.  Hearing the rain and knowing I didn't have to go anywhere made that thing that tenses up in me every morning when my eyes fly open in the darkness unknot.  I rolled over, smoothed a hand over Dillon (who stretched and purred), and pulled the covers up a little higher.  
• new greenness - As I've been driving lately, I've noticed that incredible show green appearing again.  Every shade of green from the palest and most delicate silvery-green to rich deep dark green spreads over the hillsides.  When the sun is out and the skies are nearly cloudless, something about the combination makes my heart surge.  It's like it wants to fly away into all that glorious color.  

Little joys.  These are the things from which larger happiness is made.  I'm going to keep looking for them.

One of the Freakiest Things I've Ever Seen

I'm watching the 2010 Macbeth with Patrick Stewart.  It's good, for Macbeth (I'm a Hamlet-ite).  I guess it would have been hard for it to be bad with Patrick Stewart in it.  There is, however, something in it that has scarred me for life:  the Witches.  They're terrifying.

Part of it is the way they move.  It's that slippery, fast-slow thing you often see ghosts do in horror films.  There's something about it that is deeply disturbing and that somehow impresses itself on the mind.  I really hate that.

Then there's the fact that they are, as you can clearly see here, dressed as old-fashioned nurses.  Why that adds to the creep-out factor I can't really say, but it does.  It truly, truly does.  Even the glasses on the one chick add to the overall "run-away" feeling.

 Watch them in action in the famous "Double-Double-Toil-and-Trouble" scene for yourself.  just don't expect to sleep afterward.

Bee Herding for Fun and Profit

Today was another day with no air conditioning in my classroom.  It was more than 80 degrees by the time we were in the middle of first block.  Yesterday, similar conditions triggered a migraine, one bad enough to warrant Maxalt and 12 hours of unconsciousness.  To combat the ridiculous heat, I opened most of the windows around the perimeter of my room.  While this did help the temperature to drop somewhat, it brought in its own batch of problems.

First there was the noise.  Schools are active places.  Classes move hither, thither, and yon.  Even though I am on the second floor, there were still periods of activity where somebody was taking a class to the library or when some random kid was yelling to a friend across the green.

Then there were the bugs.  Yesterday when I had the windows open, it was wasps.  One stayed overnight in the curtains, and I started my teaching day trying to kill it.  It was remarkably resilient.  I hit it about six times before I finally crushed it in the window sill.  Wasps are not my friends.

Today it was bumblebees.  No.  I do not know why.  I guess that's all Central Casting had to send after I violently eliminated the wasp.  Two flew in during second block.  One landed on the back of a miniblind.  I thumped my side hard enough to eject it out the open window behind it.  Its companion made its clumsy way between the open window and the unmoving panel, thoroughly trapping itself.

This is how I became a beeherd.  I tried to gently shoo it toward the opening.  No deal.  Apparently, bumblebees are not to be "shooed."  I finally gave up and waited on it to decide to find the opening itself.  Yeah.  It seems the bumblebees quite stubbornly insist that the one place they currently are is the only door to freedom.  Finally, I gently slid the window closed, took a bright red folder, and carefully, carefully slid it under the bee.  It clung, politely folding its wings down as if it liked being on the red folder for some reason, and I moved it to the window sill.  The folder was too large to sit there, so I gently laid it on the desk nearby.  The bee, irritated that I was moving away from the light coming in the window, buzzed back up to the glass.  I quickly flung open the window, herded the bee back onto the red folder, and propelled it outside again to all our very great relief.

I think I can file this as #356 of the things nobody ever told me school teachers were required to know how to do.....

Useless Skills I Possess

 In no particular order, I can:

1. make an owl out of white foamcore
2. slice tomatoes very thinly
3. assemble a six-band Turkish puzzle ring
4. trap a large silly white dog by using subterfuge and stealth
5. open a Maxalt tablet when I'm in so much pain that I don't even know who I am
6. curse quite colorfully in five languages (this is not to imply that I speak five languages...which would be useful)
7. plan a lesson and replan the same skills in the sudden and inexplicable absence of all technology
8. change a tire next to a busy highway and or interstate
9. fold origami cranes
10. artfully smear wheat bread with Nutella

I'm sure somebody out there is just waiting for these qualifications.  In the meantime, there is bread that needs Nutellaing.  Excuse me.

House and Garden

I slept late for me (8:00), and then I just sort of stayed in my pajamas for awhile, something I rarely do.  I watched Real Genius, one of my favorite oddball 80s movies, and then I read.

I had decided when I woke up, though, that today was going to be useful.  There was something at Moundville I sort of wanted to see, but I knew if I went that I would spend money I don't really have right now.  Therefore, instead of road trip Saturday, this was going to be do something about my crappy house Saturday.

I started with the yard.  There is never a non-mowing season in Mississippi.  Well, maybe about a week in December and the first two weeks of January.  Aside from this the growing things are a problem all the time. My yard isn't green yet, but it was scruffy with spring weeds, seedpods from blooming things, and drifts of live oak leaves.  The tufty stuff had gotten high enough to hide snakes, which like the yard are always a problem here, so it had to go.  I walk dogs out near the woods in total darkness, so clear ground is a necessity.

I got my mower running after getting air in the tires, etc., and spent the next three hours zipping around and avoiding boggy spots on the zero-turn.  It's amazing how much junk there was now that I've seen everything cleaned up.

Chewie, Yelldo, and even Roux were outside with me.   Roux was on her new run that Dad crafted with some industrial-weight cable and huge eye-bolts.  It lets her run around some outside between two large trees in the backyard but removes the risk that she'll take off.  She can finally have some sun with everybody else without having to be held on a leash.

After I finished with the yards, I got out my hammock and strung it up.  Roux immediately came and laid under it, poked her head through it, demanded I pet her over it.  I took a picture of her when she figured out she could stick her muzzle insistently through the loose weave of the hammock.  She's a mess.

While I was in the hammock, I saw the first hummingbird of the season.  He came up to the feeder in the backyard, stuck a beak in, backed up, and flew off twittering in irritation.  I guess tomorrow I need to clean up the feeders and refill them before the little sugar-hungry devils start roughing up  me on my way to the car.

About 6:30, I came in and got ready for Doctor Who.  The new episodes are on now, and although I know Moffatt is building character background, I still feel a little underwhelmed by this season.  Maybe next episode is "the magic episode" I'll need to kickstart my enthusiasm.

After Doctor Who, I turned off the TV and turned my attention to the rest of the house.  I cranked up the stereo and started in.  I cleaned up the kitchen and reloaded the dishwasher.  I moved laundry from point a to point b and started that process over again.  I vacuumed, the task I hate the most in the whole housekeeping rigmarole. I made a fresh pitcher of tea.  As loads of laundry finished, I dumped them on my bed since what I've been washing for most of the day is bed linens and my comforter, etc.

Now I'm waiting for Chewie to decide he is ready to come in for the night and for the last load of bed-related stuff to finish.  When those two things happen, I can take a hot shower, make up my bed, and get some sleep.  I'm by no means finished with my house cleaning, but what I've done will help me not to feel so bad every time I come home and see my junky house and yard.  

Nightmares

I wasn't kidding when I said I would have nightmares tonight. This, however, is really going to be no different from any other night....

Lately, I've had increasingly horrible nightmares.  All the old themes are there, like some kind of hellish classic film festival in the recesses of my mind.  I lose people.  I lose places.  I lose myself.  All of it is dressed up in the majestic glory of a mind too prone to imagination and well-fed with science fiction and fantasy monsters.

I wish I could sleep one night and not wake up, heart pounding, reaching out for...whatever it is....  I don't know what it would take to do that. I am tired of staring into the green glare of my clock as I try to make my mind comprehend what time and place I'm in.

It doesn't seem to matter what I do just before bed, either.  I can read the happiest, fluffiest stuff in the world and still wind up in that bombed-out, demon-ridden landscape that apparently hides just behind my eyelids.

It's time to head back there for tonight.  Maybe tomorrow I'll have a different story to tell.  It would make a nice change.

Hunger Games

As usual, I am more than a little behind on my viewing.  Tonight, I clicked onto my Amazon Prime Streaming account and saw The Hunger Games had been added to Prime Videos (i.e. - Free Stuff).  Even though it was going to keep me up "past my bedtime" (oh God.  how sad.), I decided I wanted to see it.

I've been putting off watching it for more reasons than the financial.  I really like the Hunger Games series.  I was afraid that they'd screw the movie up.  I hate it when movies take a perfectly good book and turn it into something else.  I could tell very early in the film that while a lot of it was going to be impossible to film because it happens in Katniss's head, the film makers had tried very hard to keep the feel and the spirit of the  books.

As disturbing as the books were, though, somehow the movie is even more.  I know I will have nightmares about it tonight.  And maybe, really, that's not the wrong reaction to have.  It SHOULD terrify.  It SHOULD cause grief, even if it's only a fiction.  When it stops moving us is when I think the problem has overtaken us.

My students asked me yesterday if they thought we were headed for a dystopia.  I told them it was entirely possible.  After NYC Mayor Bloomberg tells the citizens of his city that increased surveillance up to and including remote controlled drones will be a reality in their immediate future, I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise.  Maybe we won't be sitting around drinking Victory Gin or watching children kill in a Hunger Games, but the things these works warn us about are starting the seep in the cracks.

Of course, I could just be paranoid.  I could just have taught too many dystopian works too many times.  If it's all the same to you, though, I think I'll keep looking over my shoulder....

New Boots

When I was little, I had a pair of bright yellow wellies.  They had Big Bird on them and a fastener that always reminded me of the oval-shaped looping sticks on the lollipops I received at the end of each doctor's visit.  I guess in those days, that was an easy connection for me to make since I was forever sick, forever going to doctor, forever getting shots or having blood drawn, and forever having it pseudo-comforted by green hard candy on a cardboard stick.

Those boots always made me happy.  I remember playing in puddles with them and being oddly fascinated that my feet did not get wet even if I stood in ankle-deep puddles.  When I outgrew them, no other rainboots emerged to take their place.  I always missed them, though.

I've looked at rainboots off and one for a long time.  I stand morning and afternoon duty outside at least one week a month, sometimes two.  Our weather here in Mississippi is...well...ridiculous.  We frequently have monsoonish rains that make the entire universe slush.  Even my other "waterproof" shoes can't always do the job, and very few things make me feel as icky and miserable as soaked socks.

I finally found a pair I liked, and they were my "monthly splurge."  I have no idea why wellies are so freaking expensive, but they are.  They had to qualify as an indulgence in my current budget.  They came today, and they are so infinitely worth it.

Since wellies are fashionable right now for some odd reason, there were bunches of patterns to choose from.  They had stripes, brights, even animal prints.  None of those things really called out to me, though.  Instead, I picked a pair in a color called matte red.  That means that unlike so many of the pairs of boots running around right now, there is no insane (and easily scuffable) gloss shine to mine.  They are a cheerful red, one of my favorite pick-me-up colors.  It's the same red that the rubber balls I used to have as a child were.  I've started calling them my red-rubber-ball wellies, and that association makes them even nicer.

It happened to be raining today when the package arrived (hm. imagine that.  rain in Mississippi....), so I put on some socks, slipped on the wellies, leashed Roux, and went outside to walk dogs and test boots.  They're fabulous.  I wasn't expecting much by way of comfort, but I think I could wear them indefinitely.  Best of all, as Roux sniffed and strolled, I splashed through puddles, hesitantly at first and then with increasing confidence and into increasing depth.  No cold trickle of water seeped in.  I felt like I did when I was small, marveling at the everyday magic of being sealed safely inside my bright boots.

Swackett glumly predicts rain for tomorrow.  If its predictions pan out, I'll wear the red-rubber-ball-boots to school and be able to ford the rivers in the parking lot with no more worry than if it were a bright, dry day.  It's a little thing that makes life better.  Money well-spent, indeed.

Turkey

I had a morning of professional development and car problems.  When I got out of a two-hour assembly, I had a voicemail waiting.  It was one of the coordinators from the NEH Summer Institute I had applied for.  Out of more than 200 applications, I had been chosen to be one of thirty teachers to spend three weeks exploring the Ottoman Empire in Turkey.

I am afraid that I jumped up and down and squeaked like a cartoon character at that point.

It still hasn't fully registered that it is real.  I have been pinning stuff about Turkey on a special board on Pinterest since I first became aware of this program.  While I was in Venice, Constantinople (now, of course, Istanbul) was everywhere because of the trade ties and seemingly-regular wars.  Now, I have the chance to see the other side of that total equation.  It is incredible.

In all my life, I have never imagined that I would be able to see Turkey.  I have to pay for my own plane ticket, but the NEH provides a stipend to pay for the other expenses in-country.  Even if I have to eat rice for three months, I will find a way to pay for that ticket.

At Loose Ends

If you're wondering where I've been, the answer is...nowhere.   I am at sort of at loose ends with several things.  I heard back from the Japan summer trip.  It's a no-go.  I still haven't heard anything from Turkey; I'm afraid to be optimistic.  I want it so much, more every time I go on Pinterest (I've set up a board there just for stuff about Turkey).

It's more than just that, though.  I keep feeling like it's time to make some kind of change, but I don't know what kind of change to make.  Should I change jobs?  Hairstyles?  The type of yogurt I have for lunch?  Should I learn another language?  How to crochet?  How to rebuild an engine?

I feel a vague dissatisfaction with everything, and I don't know why.  Nothing is terrible now.  I mean, of course, my car is still screwing up and leaving me stranded.  And I still have work stress.  Migraines.

I don't know what to do about any of this, though.  Is there even a way to make it better?  Isn't this what life is just made of?  I'm trying to stay focused on good things.  Into every life a little crap must fall but that doesn't mean it's all crap all the time.

Maybe it's just spring, that time of new beginnings.  Sometimes it fills the air and makes me want to bloom with the daffodils and the dogwoods.  I wish I knew what I needed to bloom myself.

Like French-Fried Hell

The past three days, I've been fighting off a migraine.  The weather has been rocking and rolling.  There has been stress of varying kinds.  Today, I lost the fight.

I made it to my off period.  I intended to find a way to defeat the headache so I could finish my day.  How silly of me.  Within 45 minutes, I was literally sobbing, head-on-desk, as the room spun and evil little psychos with spiky shoes jumped up and down  inside my brain.

I vaguely remember stumbling downstairs and telling my administrator something.  My head principal heard her talking on the walkie-talkies trying to call a sub, and I will forever be grateful for the fact that he told me (through her) to go on home.  They had it.

I sort of remember struggling to get my stuff together, literally and figuratively.  I sort of remember my administrator following me out to my car to make sure I made it.  I remember far too little of the drive home.

I do remember saying something over and over as I drove.  I became aware that it was the "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy at some point.  I suppose there are some people who recite a poem or a psalm in times of distress.  Apparently, and probably not unexpectedly, I turn to Hamlet....

When I got home, I struggled to walk the dogs.  Then I lay down to hear them erupt into insane barking.  I dragged myself up and went to the door where a guy from EMEPA and I scared the living bejeezus out of each other.  He and another guy had come to replace my power meter.  He kept saying, "It will only take about 5 seconds.  Your power will only be off 5 seconds."  To be honest, I wouldn't have cared if it were off for a half day if it meant I could get my dogs to shut up and let me lie back down.  I muttered something at him and nodded a lot, he walked off, I closed the door, and by the time I managed to fall down again, I heard the microwave give its excited "I-have-life-and-meaning-again" beep.  One of my last coherent thoughts was, "Huh.  It really was five seconds."

Then I remember nothing until Roux was suddenly leaping on the bed and burrowing her nose under my arm and Chewie was dancing around us both.

I still feel like french-fried hell.  I just looked up to see there is still daylight.  Well, it can just get along without me.  I'm going back to bed soon. Maybe tomorrow will be better.