Monday, June 28, 2010

Night Terrors

I'm dreaming again.  I haven't dreamed, or at least dreamed to remember them, in a long time. While I missed the fanciful world my brain always spins, I  think I might be happier right now if they would quietly slide back into whatever dark back alley in which they've been lurking.

My cousin always said that he could make a million dollars if he could just find a way to hook some kind of recording device up to my head as I slept.  I suspect he's right.  Only, lately, I don't think anybody would want to look at what my subconscious is dredging up.  They wake me up.  I sit up and stare over at the alarm clock sitting innocuously on my bedside table, look around my room, get glares from all the assorted cats draped over me who have been disturbed by my sudden jerk into wakefulness.

The dreams start out with characters from any sort of thing, people I know, places I've been, things I've read or watched, and spin off into wildness.  There are golden people with silver wings.  Sometimes I am one of them.  There are institutional buildings with endless gray block halls and no windows that I wander and wander until the hellish occurs.  I go back to Japan, but there is no sweetness in it.  Instead, I am lost in train stations, sitting in formal gardens behind temples but aware there is something bad there, visiting there and asked suddenly to change my whole life and live there once again.  I'm in hospitals, outside one of those too-large silently-hung doors, heart in my throat, unwilling to push it open for fear of what is on the other side.  And even though there may be people I know to start with, I always wind up alone at the moment it comes to face the monster, to open the door, to decide whether to flee or stay.

I wish I knew what it was that is making me dream these things so I could change it.  I have a couple of ideas about one of two of these things, and I know that I can't really do anything to alter those situations.  I wish, too, that there were somebody here when I wake up other than my grumpy cats, somebody who could tell me that there was no silent figure sliding through the darkness toward me with malicious intent, somebody who could pull me back to myself when I dream that my feet have left the ground and I can't get back to the earth no matter how hard I try. 

Until the moon changes phase, until I can get so tired that I sleep so deep I don't remember these things anymore, or until some sweetness of dreaming returns, I guess I will do in sleep what I do in life.  I will find some way to rescue myself in the dark watches of the night.  It just gets a little tiring sometimes to have to be on-duty for it twenty-four-seven.

Death at Prayer

What kind of god do you believe in if you can go into a place where people are at prayer, and are indeed praying to the exact same god you claim, and you can cut them down without mercy?  What kind of religion is it that you have if you can go out into the streets and see that violence and not have your stomach turn, your very sense of being cry out to the heavens for justice, if you can offer sweets to those with the guns over the still-warm corpses, pat them on the shoulders and tell them that they are doing a righteous deed?

Has there ever been a major atrocity that we've perpetrated upon each other that wasn't at its base somehow related to religion?  And doesn't it grieve the loving heart of God as nothing else possibly could when we look at each other and are so blinded by differences that mean nothing, nothing, by colors, by sounds, by slight variations in shapes, that we become afraid of each other and allow that fear to turn into violence?  Are we ever going to recognize that we are much more the same that different, ever going to be able to rejoice in those differences instead of try to make them a matter of superiority or inferiority? 

I'm sad tonight and angry.  I watched the news, and I shouldn't have.  Too many blind people making too much horror today.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Vincent and the Doctor

The Doctor: The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don't always soften the bad things, but vice-versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.

While he's still far, far away from occupying the favored spots held by Four or Ten, I'm growing more and more fond of Eleven.  The writing is good, and the storylines are excellent.  Tonight's episode, "Vincent and the Doctor," took Amy and Eleven to meet Vincent van Gogh, and it was one of the best I've seen in a very long time.  Maybe it was so good because it was so much a character study of van Gogh, of his pain and his art, of his joy at the beauty that surrounded him. 

It was odd that he managed to mix in so well to the world of Doctor Who, but then again, that has always been one of the great draws of the show for me, that anybody anywhere at any time does fit into it.  It doesn't have to be all technology and space mystery to have a place in the storyline.  Real, imaginary, past, present, and future all are fair game.  It gives a richness to the world of the show that doesn't exist in most other places.

As for van Gogh, the actor playing him and the storyline broke my heart. His smile was as lovely and fragile as bone china, and when he was in madness or despair, he made you want to protect him and help him.  I don't know nearly enough about van Gogh.  Artists have not, as a rule, been a major source of inquiry for me.  Instead, I tend to focus on writers.  You can be that after tonight, however, he will now be my new research project. 

Of course his paintings are beautiful.  Everybody knows some of them.  I think every college dorm room poster sale is required by law to have at least three sizes of Starry Night.  There are a few pieces by him that I personally love, including the church that was so much a focus of tonight's show, the same one I've put on this post now.  I also love his painting of irises, among others.  I will have to find a good biography of him and hope for a chance to go somewhere with a concentrated collection of his works.  The museums I've been to have had maybe one or so, but I've never had a chance to see anything like a gallery full.  Maybe someday I'll get a chance to go and experience the real thing for myself.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Classics

I went to see a movie this afternoon.  I got to see The Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen, which all by itself was a great treat since I was a small child when it came out the first time.  The crowning touch on my enjoyment, though was where I got to see it. 

We have an old-fashioned movie palace here, a jewel of the bygone days of cinema as the primary form of public entertainment.  Although now it is ever-so-slightly faded around the edges, the gilt is a little worn, it is still magnificent.  From the grand chandelier on the ceiling to the proscenium arch, from the ornamental fountains to the theater organ, it makes going to see a movie an occasion. 

Too few things these days are occasions.  Certainly going to a movie at our other, more modern, theater isn't.  There, of course, you get THX surround sound, and, it must be admitted, the seats are a bit bigger and more luxurious, but there is no mystery, no sense of coming to a place for anything special.  It's just a very big screen and very loud, something increasingly attainable in the privacy of one's own living room. 

Given the choice, I want the gorgeous architecture, the history, and the gravity of the moment.  I want the Moorish arches and the red lightbulbs dimming before the show begins.  I want the tiles on the floor of a real lobby, a place to stand to meet my friends and feel excited a little to go inside again.

I hope they will continue to show old movies there.  In fact, I hope they'll reach back to the golden era of Hollywood and pull some of the great ones, Casablanca, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot.  I could spend many a happy evening there in the dark, to paraphrase Norma Desmond herself if they do.

Friday, June 25, 2010

The Illusionist

I wrote this today, and it may be the best thing I've done in about three years.  It started coming to me in the shower (why do things DO that?), and I finally got out and got it down.  It still needs work, probably a very heavy pruning down worse than anything else, but the beginnings are there.  I'm putting it up here for comments, if anybody other than my good old porn spam buddies (who continue to be persistent, curse them) have any.

The Illusionist

Poetry and magic
elevate the ordinary
reveal that world
inside a grain of sand
believe the impossible
and on good days
turn horror into beauty
waltz the truth into unwilling minds
like a party crasher at a masked ball
ripping away the domino suddenly
with a self-deprecatory grin
and the slow unfurling
of a graceful hand

Both require absolute dedication
an apprenticeship to the craft
a certain native skill with deception
a touch of divine madness
much blind luck

Practitioners jealously hoard secrets
eye one another territorially
stalking cats in narrow alleys
and even if smiles are friendly
each really thinks
his way of performing
that particular trick
is better than yours

I unveil the worn gilt-edged tools
of my illusion
all the things
borrowed, bought, won, forged, or stolen
stand before you
in the center of this paper stage
fan my fingers wide to show
my virtue
my total honesty
praying I've left behind no tell-tale trace of
wires, springs, chains
everything that's hidden
under these somber black robes
to make it appear effortless

You'll see
what I want you to see, actually
Nimble misdirection
you applaud the
a white dove suddenly soaring free
instead of the broken body
the flattened cage
which is
I'm sorry to reveal
probably always closer to the truth
of how these things really happen

It's all leading up to the grand finale
those swords in the corner
you've been eying all night
thinking they can't be real
every one unique and appalling
terror fabricated for effect
like that menacing silent cabinet
with the lock on the door

This trick is my specialty
the one everybody demands
a real killer
so it comes last
and maybe even a little reluctantly
Sometimes it's a little hard
to step out and take the bows
showmanship requires
when done

I'm locking myself inside
the mystic darkness again
feeling those familiar blades
grate on bone
and you
check your watch
glance at the door
think of heading for the exit
to beat the crowd
wondering how anybody
could ever believe in anything
as false as this

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Out of Print Clothing

This is one of the coolest webshops I've seen in a very long time.  Their tees are an English teacher's dream.  The other part of that dream is the fact that every time they sell one of their very wonderful shirts, they donate a book to Books for Africa.  I hope they sell a million of them.  They are both honoring literature's past and promoting its future.  How can you ask for more?

Thumbs

I hate it when I'm not smart enough to figure out the inanimate objects.  All day long, I've been working furiously to get my kitchen cleaned up with the idea that my reward would be a green tea latte from my new coffee maker.  It came today courtesy of UPS (or the devils in the enticing brown van, as Roux refers to them), and when I took the box into the kitchen, I realized that practically every surface was covered up with crap from the school year.  Not only that, but last summer, I didn't get a chance to do a full-scale cleanup because of the knee.  Today, then, became the day of sort, file, throw away, and organize.  It took me about five hours to go through all the piles of stuff I foolishly saved for later, to do all the little projects I laid aside during the school year, and to go through my pantry and throw out all the things that were no longer useful. 

I have two large trashbags full of refuse plus a huge cardboard box full of other tiny cardboard boxes now, so I feel good about bringing some cleanliness to the space.  I don't have to walk through with my mental blinders on saying "I'll get to that later," or be embarrassed when family or the bug guy comes in.  It looks like somebody who cares might actually live here instead of it being a teenage crashpad.  I hate the way the house gets when the school year gets going, but it's an annual part of my life.  I just try to catch up in the breaks.  It's probably just as well that I'm not married.  I'd hate to foist this way of living on somebody else.

Anyway, I got everything in the kitchen pretty much squared away, set up the coffee maker, mixed my matcha and milk together, ran the first water through the boiler, and tried my darndest to steam some milk to make the latte.  Nada.  Zip.  Very few bubbles.  It did seem as though it would make a very fine cup of coffee, I grant you.  However, for my purposes, although I tried every configuration I can find, I don't think this thing is going to be useful to me at all.  It didn't even heat the milk.  I don't know what to do.  The reviewers on amazon (lots of them, not just a couple of plants from the company) said they could use this to do what I want.  I guess I'm just thumbs.

I mixed my matcha and milk, added half a shot glass of vanilla syrup to it (no idea how much is an appropriate amount, but that tasted right), and frothed it all with a Japanese tea ceremony whisk.  It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it was pretty close.  I just wish I knew how to make the machine work.  Sigh.....

Friday, June 18, 2010

Bloomington, Again

And so I came back to Bloomington.  It's been so long since I was here.  In fact, the last time I was here was the last time I saw T.  It was a bad, bad visit, full of things that made me cry. I was physically ill as well as emotionally distressed.  I didn't focus on things that I should have, and I took away a taint instead of happy memories. 

This time, though, I have spent the whole day doing whatever caught my fancy.  I visited restaurants that were favorites, that I had had great meals with good friends in, and I walked all over the campus.  I took the photos I should have taken that fateful trip in the past.  I bought silly souvenirs, lanyards, a nice sweatshirt, a couple of replacement t-shirts for the ones of mine that finally have become too worn to wear for anything but yarding.  I walked past buildings I taught in, past Memorial Hall, and it all felt both strange and familiar, like coming home after a very long absence.

 And yet.  And yet.  It's not my IU anymore, is it?  I'm not even a graduate student anymore.  I don't even look like a graduate student anymore.  I felt conspicuous today.  It belongs to a whole generation of others now, young and lean, still with that hungry and vibrant look about them.  I heard them on their cellphones fussing about professors who required them to have their books on the first day of classes only to tell them that they needed to read the first few chapters.  I heard those silly undergrad conversations that are an essential part of the college experience even if they are absolute comedy to outside observers.  I saw the music school students laden with their instruments in their fascinating and mysterious cases shuttling back and forth endlessly to and from the rehearsal building.  I was there like a stone a huge river was lazily swirling around, in it but not really a part of it. 

I'm not sad, not really.  I had my time here, and it was very very good.  It was, in fact, essential in many ways in making me who I am today.  Without the return of some of the people I loved, too, it wouldn't be my IU ever again, anyway. 

Ultimately, I'm very glad I came.  It sharpened memories that had started to grow fuzzy through time, and it gave me something to replace what had been my last memory, tears and worrying over a guy who was totally worthless when I should have been paying better attention to the music my beautiful friend was making with his magic hands as I sat by his piano listening to him play.  I don't think that even if I come to the reading next year I will come back here.  I think I've had what I needed from it.  Unless I knew that some of those I love were going to be here, I don't think I would want to.  Instead, I think I will use this time and effort to go see some of them instead.  It will be another way to relive the magic of those years with something more meaningful than a stone structure.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Thought on Politics

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." ~ Aesop

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Shakespeare in the Park

I saw a live version of The Tempest tonight at Louisville's Shakespeare Festival.  They have an outdoor theater in a large park in the center of town (I think it is, in fact, called Central Park) where they have nightly performances of Shakespeare during the summer. 

I've never seen The Tempest live, although I have always liked it, always loved Prospero even though there is some sort of shady business going on with him according to some critics.  There is so much focus on that play now with a colonialist eye.  Caliban, Ariel, they become something modern, something different.  It's fascinating, in a way to study it that way, to talk about it that way.  I think it's important to rethink familiar and comfortable pieces of literature.  It doesn't mean we have to abandon the way we've always related to them, but it can mean another layer of richness, perhaps.

On a completely girlish and silly note, and having absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with criticism of any kind, if I have a daughter ever, one of the things I may name her in my overly English geekish way is Miranda. She and Ophelia are my two favorite Shakespeare women, and I don't know about naming my daughter after Ophelia.  I think that might be tempting fate a bit much.

In any case, and all hypothetical daughters aside, there is something about that play, one of Shakespeare's last, and the things he says in it that move me.  Maybe it's the magic.  Maybe it's Ariel.  Maybe it's the "now our revels all are ended" speech which I can see an aging master coming forward on the stage to say, staring around him at the crowds filling the theater.  I don't know.  It's powerful.

Tonight as a whole was a great experience.  It was outdoors in a lovely place, always a bonus when you've been cooped up in a large artificially lit and cooled space for many a day.  There were lightning bugs everywhere, and I kept thinking about how you just could not have asked for a better special effect in a play about magic than they were.  Of course, there were kids darting around in the damp grass trying to capture the lightning bugs, too, but that was just right as well.

I wish I had something like this closer to home.  I guess I will just settle for indulgences when I travel, sort of like a favorite treat you only get on vacation.  I just wish it didn't have to be that way. 

Monday, June 14, 2010

Billy Collins Reads

Last night, I saw Billy Collins read.  It was like a sort of religious experience.  I don't say that lightly or facetiously.  He was amazing.  There, standing at the front of that large room in front of all of us, he was so kind to a group that was tired yet eager, weary yet waiting for his words like rain on parched earth. Oh, and he didn't fail us. 

All day long, we'd been trapped in our chairs reading variations on the same three themes.  Well, I guess in fairness to my colleagues in AP Lang, I should say six themes, perhaps.  The quality of these essays ranged from moments of sublimity to long patches of the absurd, but regardless of the merit, the rating of them was and is hard work.  That's what made Mr. Collins' reading so wonderful.  It was a feeding of the soul, a recharging, a reminder of what we love so much and what we want to pass along to those lovelies who come into our classrooms every year. 

After the reading, he stayed to sign, and although I do not get people to sign things because I have always thought it was strange to pursue someone's name written in something, I have a signed copy of one of his books.  I felt strange the whole time I did it.  I wanted to apologize most fervently for asking it.  If I hadn't been getting something signed to give as a gift, I probably wouldn't have done it.  But I did, and I am glad now, even if it does still feel strange to have stood in a line for a very long time to ask a person I do not know and greatly admire to write his name in a book for me.

What I would have liked would have been to have talked to him.  These are the things that don't happen, you know.  I would have liked to have asked him questions about poetry, about being a poet, things that are probably so presumptuous coming from a nothing to a deity that I'm not even going to write them here.  I wish life worked like that sometimes, though. I probably wouldn't have been able to overcome my shyness to talk to him, anyway.

Last night, I heard poems of his that I knew and ones I'm not as familiar with, but every single one I heard, I loved.  And want.  And wish, in the secret burning envy of my poet's heart, I could figure out the inside workings of like an amateur magician sitting down with a handkerchief and a limb broken from a tree and trying to duplicate something once done by Houdini.  I'll have to have more of Mr. Collins' books now, just so I can be sure I have all the things he read for us last night and all the things he didn't.  Maybe if I study long enough, even though I'll never fool the crowds with my sleight of hand, I can at least amuse myself more prettily.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Appropriate Quote for the Day

"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body." ~ Sir Richard Steele

Then, lads and lasses, I am the strongest woman in the freakin' WORLD right now....

The Reading Continues

I seem to have adjusted to the rubric somewhat.  I am doing better.  I am not much faster than I was, but the crushing sense of insecurity I had about it all has faded.  I am starting to be able to read an essay and just "see" it for what it is.  That's a great feeling.  I know it's going to pay off for my students, too.  Well, let's look at that statement just a moment.  Actually, they're going to hate it.  A lot.  At first.  Because their grades are probably going to go right into the toilet.  At first.  But ultimately, it's going to pay off in the form of better scores for them, of this I am completely confident.  It should also pay off for me because I should be hella faster in grading now.  I literally rubric graded about one hundred and fifty essays today.  That may be an all-time record for me today.  If I can get my speed up even more, I might be able to survive the year ahead of me, what with all the joy of Honors English II being laid on top of AP....

The Reason I Have Comment Moderation on This Thing

Yeah, so Some Jackass posted a comment to my blog that turned out to be a porn link.  Thank You Ever So.  This is the reason I have comment moderation turned on.  Look.  If you need that sort of thing to get through the day, I rather think that's your business.  However, do NOT bring it to this tiny little corner of the interwebz.  That's all I'm saying folks.....

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Intimidated

So I'm finally here where I've dreamed of being for so long, and I'm scared to death.  I feel like an idiot come among experts.  I don't know how many people are aware of how scathingly some of those of us in profession judge others.  If we don't wear powersuits and pearls, well, then what the hell do we know about grammar and literature (and, of course, that is pronounced at liCH-a-ture).  If you know me at all, you know I don't do pearls, and the only suits I own are clowny.  So basically, I'm screwed.  Sigh.  I come from the other side of the English tree.  I'm the pure poet goofy side.  God, I hope somebody here likes that, too.  Otherwise, I may be back on the road sooner than expected.  I feel very small and of very little worth right now.....

Thursday, June 03, 2010

St. Cecilia

I'm not Catholic, so saints and the whole mystery surrounding them are a bit beyond me, but I've always liked the whole idea of somebody sort of "watching over" a particular area or profession.  It seems like there is a saint for everything, and I think that if I were Catholic, I'd probably be very, very confused or need a flow chart, a pocket cheat sheet, or something to keep up with them all. Is there an iPhone app for saints?  If not, maybe there should be.  And I'm really not kidding with that.  I'd download it.  I like to know, you know.... I guess maybe if you start young enough learning it all, you just sort of take it in naturally like any other thing, but there sure are a bunch of them....

Anyway, that's really neither here nor there, I guess.  As I've been poking around and doing research, I stumbled across St. Cecilia, patron of musician, church music, poets, and singers.  I thought, "Wow!  That hits me on almost every count."   (I do not sing except for my own private amusement.  Trust me.  It's better that way.) I did some research on her, and it seems she, like most saints, was an admirable person.  I thought that was pretty neat that one person had been put in charge of all those related fields. 

Then, around Christmas two years ago, I found a reproduction of a carving by Raphael that I loved.  My parents gave it to me for a present.  It now sits on my piano.  Here is the original carving.  My plaque is the central portion without the upper and lower decorations. I've enjoyed it so much that I started looking for other little things with St. Cecilia on them.

The only other thing I've found that I've liked enough to purchase came from Etsy (of course).  It's a really lovely necklace by rosamystica.  It's recast from an antique, and it's just pleasing to me visually and for what it stands for.  If you read here very often, you know I am all about the symbols....

Ultimately, the symbol is the most important thing to me.  Seeing these representations of St. Cecilia reminds me of aspects of myself that are important to me.  I am a church musician, even if I'm not a great one (and, trust me, I'm really, really not).  I am a poet, and my soul burns to be a better one every day.  I'm a shower and car ride singer who occasionally gets drafted to do a song in front of the church.  I think it's good to be reminded of these identities, these other selves I have in addition to my "teacher self" because sometimes my teacher self eats all else before it like a ravenous glutton. Maybe if I have a few small tokens around, I can reach up and touch my necklace or see the plaque on the piano in passing and remind myself of the other sides of my life and maintain that healthy and vital balance.  If the saint is up there looking down, I think she'd be pleased by that.