Listening Away

I have an album of Brazilian music spinning through my iTunes, the suggestion of my friend D, part of a huge list of stuff he was kind enough to compile to help me get ready for my visit to his country.  I'm just sitting here listening to it grinning.  It's so good.  I can only catch about every fifth or sixth word because it's a cognate with Spanish, but I can't stop the smile.  I love the sound of the music, and I love the sound of the Portuguese.

I have loved Portuguese since I heard it for the first time, maybe even more than Spanish.  Whenever I used to hear my beautiful friend P the pianist speak it with my lost friend A, I would just sit back and let the sound of it wash over me like a gorgeous stream.  I've never had a chance to study it, but I've wanted to for years.  I love Spanish for the music in it. It's a good language to be happy and angry in.  It's a good language to talk to myself in when I'm working on something.  Portuguese has that same lovely music in it and a little something else.  I don't know how to describe it. I'm not sure what I'd use it for.  I'd need to know it a little better to know its character more.  I'd like to have them both.

Every language has something it does fantastically well.  Japanese, for example, is great for uncomfortable conversations and situations.  You get linguistically distant, stay vague, remain ultra-polite, give circuitous and face-saving non-answers which really are answers, and maintain a level of pragmatic protocol and hierarchy that gives you something to keep your mind busy while you worry and look for a chance to dart out the door.  Perfect.

The languages a country speaks, both its spoken words and what it makes with its instruments, tell so much about what to expect from it.  I love to hear as much of both as I can when I'm going into a place.  I like to know the old stuff as well as the new.  The traditional music tells what the place is at its deepest heart, what it has come from, what it is when nobody is looking.  The new artists or new takes on the old forms are also great to see because they show how the culture wants to be seen, how perceptions are changing, how that which was is either remaining, dying away, or, in some cases, coming full circle again.  Don't even get me started on what I can pull out of a culture by their words.  It's the same sort of thing all over again.

I could spend a very happy life going from place to place and doing nothing but studying language and music, looking and how the two match up (or don't).  I wonder if there's a job out there that does that.  I'm betting not, but isn't it a great idea?  Somebody should TOTALLY pay me to do that.  Get on that, people with money.  I'm counting on you.  In the meantime, though, this album is really great, and I need to turn my attention back to it a little more closely before bedtime comes and clubs me over the head for the evening.

Paranoia

Third period was on it with the stripper thing again yesterday.  It started with talking about missed birthdays and presents.  They realized that they had missed mine, and they said they'd have brought me a present if they'd have known.  I told them they could have brought me copy paper (a running not-so-funny joke in my life).  One of them said they'd get me a new outfit for my "routine."   And off we went....

I just laugh at that most of the time because if you know me, I think you know that there is no person on earth less likely to be thought of in that capacity than I.  Guys don't notice me.  I have girl friends who are stunning, for whom guys will quite literally fling themselves over and through things.  I'm sort of the tag-along shadow who keeps my friends company until something male comes along, the "bodyguard," I guess.  Every group has that smart-girl-who-isn't-lovely. That's me. Oh, guys talk to me.  I make an awesome friend.  That's about it.  I mean, I don't scare babies or curdle milk, but men do not find me physically attractive.  I have known this since I was a teenager.   I made my peace with this ages ago.

That's why the whole stripper thing is so silly to me.  Yeah.  Right.  Me.  Uh-huh.  I'm more likely to be swinging a sword than off a pole, honey.

But it persists.  And so I started to worry in that ridiculous paranoid way that you do about things...  How did that idea get stuck in their head to start with?  Did I do something in any way inappropriate at any point to put that in their minds?  As a teacher, I have to watch everything I do so carefully.  It would kill me if I were accidentally doing something stupid and not knowing it.

One person I told this story to said, "It's because you are a woman, and you're totally fearless.  That's all."  I never would have put "fearless" and "stripper" together, but okay.  I sort of figure they're doing it just because they're a fun and funny class, and they've found the absurdity of it makes me laugh and roll my eyes.  I would take either of those answers.  I just couldn't live with the idea of impropriety.

Little Things

Nutella and wheat bread accomplished.  That has become my favorite breakfast.  Of course, I am probably having way more than the suggested serving of Nutella on my single slice, but I love it when it sort of  oozes out of the side when I fold the bread in half.  Nutella is fine in every conceivable way, even when it has to be delicately licked off one's fingertips.  

The little things like that are keeping me running at full tilt as I wait for the big things like next week's trip.  I still can't believe I'm going to be on a plane headed back to Ireland and England in about a week's time.  As always with travel that vast, there is no reality to it yet.  I will actually have to roll out the luggage and start throwing crap in before it will hit me that yes, I really get to go this time.  I have sort of started planning photos I want to make sure I get this time in my head, though.  I've mentally shot St. Stephen's Tower, Tower Bridge, and the Eye about sixteen different ways.  Heh.  Cliche much?  Sue me.  

But until then, it's the little things.  I'm watching Chewie and Roux run around and be ridiculous.  I'm staying up a little too late reading Dylan's lyrics as poetry.  I'm looking for a good book to teach myself basic Brazilian Portuguese on amazon.com and wondering if I can even manage to do that without hearing it.  I'm toying with my tattoo design...still....because I can't quite figure out what I want it to look like, and until I can get it right, I don't want to get it done.  (mostly it's the quote that's the problem now)  I'm eating Nutella on wheat bread.  

And that brings me back full circle, at which point it is probably time to get up from here and get dressed.

Bluestocking

I have the oddest sense of having gotten a lot done today for no good reason.  It's deceptive, this.  I suppose the reality will come crashing down on me tomorrow....

I did get some things done, true enough.  I found a silly little freeware program that allows me to put electronic post-it notes on my computer screen, and my GOD, what a brilliant thing that is.  (Yeah.  I know.  It's been around forever, but I just thought to install it now.)  I have a post-it fetish anyway (it's a teacher thing.  you wouldn't understand.), and now I can make these little reminders that are right there in the way of every electronic thing I try to do.  It's a good thing.  It's a very good thing.  Thanks to them, I have gotten three or four nagging little tasks taken care of and others will get done either tonight before bed or first thing in the morning when I arrive at school.  My goal will be to clear away all the post-its each day.

I find my fingers itching to get more done, though, things I can't even start yet.  I want to start working on the collaboration between my classes and an international teacher's class, but that's not something I can control from my end.  I've sent the email to IREX, and I'm waiting to hear back from them.  I hope that will actually happen.  It's exciting to think I might be able to present my students with that opportunity, and I want to start getting the logistics out of my head and into reality.

And then, of course, there's the Fulbright.  I keep thinking about it, about the countries they listed.  My three haven't changed.  I keep thinking about what it might be like to spend three to six months in any of those places, actually to be able to wake up and know I was there in the morning, and I swear I absolutely am ready to pack my bags and get on the plane tomorrow.  Every conversation I have where members of my own family look at me with that sort of blank, uncomprehending stare when I try to talk makes me want to go faster.

I don't understand why that's happening, or why every time I try to express how happy or excited I am about something related to Brazil or even to the trip to Washington I just went on, I have to be told that "You have to remember it's not like that for everybody," or "Not everybody would enjoy something like that," as if somehow it's wrong for me to like traveling, going, seeing, like I'm doing something shameful.  There's no point in even trying to share what I see or what happens on my trips anymore.  I get a dim smile, a disinterested "that's nice," and then the conversation is deliberately turned away to something that happened at church last week.

Why is it so wrong for me to want this?  There are always a million question trying to pick holes in everything.... This could go wrong, or this, or this, or are you sure they're really going to take you?  Are you really sure the program is reliable?  Isn't three months a long time?  It's never, "Wow!  You got picked for a program that's nationally competitive?  Great!"  or "You're living out a dream to see the world?  Go for it!"  It makes me feel small and bad, like they think I'm stupid or gullible, worse not to have anyone to share it with when I come home.

I guess I am officially that embarrassing bluestocking "spinster" daughter who doesn't have enough sense to be ashamed that she didn't manage to catch some man, ANY man, and have children.  Everything about me seems to be humiliating, my friends, my hobbies, my clothing, my need for travel, my love of tech, my penchant for grabbing my camera and disappearing on my own schedule, since all of it causes a change of topic if I start talking about it, or a not-so-subtle comment that I'm getting "too into" whatever it is.  But, really, haven't I been this way all my life?  What's changed now?  Why is it just now that everything about me is wrong?

What is they want me to do with my life?  It didn't work out to be "happy families" for me.  That doesn't mean I can't be happy.  That doesn't mean I have to sit my entire life on the sidelines waiting for an escort or a savior, does it?  I by God won't.  Nobody should have to wait for someone else to help them live.  We're complete in and of ourselves, aren't we?  If we're lucky enough to find somebody who will come along for the ride, then we're blessed.  It's not that I don't want that, but until I find that, if I ever do, am I expected to sit twiddling my thumbs or building clumsy mantraps with my inadequate skills at coquetry?  There are so many other things out there so much more worthy of my time.

Truth be told, even though it hurts me, I am tired of trying to figure it out.  I don't think I can.  This is who and what I am, at least in this present iteration.  I'm sorry that it doesn't apparently measure up to what they wanted.  I guess every family has to have one oddity, right?  Look at me as fulfilling that roll, sit me in a corner at the next family gathering with my iPhone so I can check in on the digital world where there are at least a couple of people who can be said to "get me," and I guess we'll all just keep rolling along.....

So He Made an Impression

And just like this, I'm going to make a liar out of myself.  Hm.  I figured it would work like this.  Heh.  No better way to get myself writing than by saying I have nothing to say....

But I can't get this one thing out of my head, so if I boot it here, maybe it will settle down and leave me alone.

I ran across somebody interesting.  It was brief, but it made an impression.  He was smart and funny, really clever and easy to talk to.  I actually liked his ideas.  They were logical, shrewd, well-thought out.   And he's in education administration. You just can't imagine how rare a combination this seems to be.

When I was listening to him explain why his school had a program that chose to meld dual enrollment with AP even though he believed AP to be the more sound thing educationally, it was like listening to a good general on the field making a tough decision.  I could respect that.  He had most of the general disdain and worry I usually feel about the potential for lack of quality in dual enrollment if it isn't carefully watched, but he'd found a very good way to ensure his students got the best of all possible worlds.  He was a pragmatist who knew how to work the system.  I think I might have been just the tiniest bit smitten.

It didn't hurt that he had sky blue eyes, either, and was probably born charming people with that smile.  Seriously, though, the more he explained how he ran his school, the more logic and order he outlined, the more sense and reason that fell out of his mouth, the better looking he got.  Is that wrong? (I'm sure that's wrong.)  I guess if you lean across the table and speak clever, practical education to me, I get all wibbly.....

This might be officially the first time I've ever been envious of another teacher's admin.  Who knew that was even possible?  I have no reason to think I'll encounter him again although I suppose I will see his teacher again in Washington when we meet back up in October.  Sigh.  Well.  I guess I'll just sort of have to consider it like a Superman sighting, encouraging just because you know he IS out there somewhere....

Quietly

I just haven't had a lot to say in these past few days.  It's not that there isn't anything going on.  Quite the contrary, actually.  I'm really busy.  It's that time of the year, and I have a million things I am trying to get nailed down with this or that project, trip, or plan.  And I've come here several times, but I've gone away again without being willing or able to find anything clever or worthy to fill up this little white box.  What shall I tell you?  What is it you want to know, anyway?

I suppose this is just one of those phases where I'm not creating a lot of output.  It is extending into all my electronic worlds; I'm not tumbling, tweeting, or posting to FB (anything except pictures, which I don't seem to be able to help, really).  Of course, that might end this afternoon.  One can never tell.  A certain slant of light, something that happens, who knows what might change it.  It's happened before.  For now though, I'm just going through life with little cat feet.  Quietly.  Quietly.

So It's Getting a Bit Ridiculous

....because I'm mostly happy in the day, but at night I am having the worst dreams ever.  Ridiculously bad.  I don't understand this at all.  Well, okay, I mean logically, I know the dreams have to be a sign that everything is NOT all peachy-keen, and if I scratch the surface just a bit, I can get to a couple of things that might be causing a portion of them, but I can't understand why suddenly, every time I close my eyes, I'm in my own private horror film.  Why has it waited until a time when things are actually starting to be okay again to "start the show"?  Maybe I was just too exhausted before, sleeping too deeply to notice?  I don't know, but I don't even want to sleep now.  At least last night's only involved my house getting destroyed.  Nobody I knew was threatened or anything in any of them.  Oh, well, except for me.  (And yeah.  I am aware there's a running theme in this.)

The Beauty We Love

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened.  Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
~Rumi
________________

I love Rumi.  It seems I can't read anything of his without thinking, "Exactly."  I was taking a break after a day full of stupid, thumbing through a well-worn copy of Barks's The Essential Rumi (which if you don't have, you should get with all due speed), when this struck me.  How often do we deprive ourselves of opportunities to pursue things we enjoy and thereby enrich our lives?  How often does our "busy-ness" interfere with our life?  Shouldn't we be busy with the things we find lovely? Isn't that passion telling us something?  Joseph Campbell said it another way, "Follow your bliss."  Same principle, really.  Follow the thing that makes you happy because it is okay and right to be happy.  There is a reason it makes you happy, and if it doesn't make you happy, then you should probably get away from it.  I'm as guilty as anybody else of clinging to blades that cut down to the bone for no good reason.  What a lovely thought this is, though.  If you find it beautiful, pursue it, and through that pursuit, somehow, you will be touching the divine, a process through which all things are bettered.  Happiness, communion, inspiration.  Yeah.  Sign me up.

Nope

Even worse dreams last night on the stalker theme.  Some guy in a van kept pulling through the circle drive in front of my house like he was trying to see if I was home, waiting until I was gone to break in.  I was getting ready for school, running late, so I saw him, tried to run back in the house, but suddenly the power was off, cats were trying to run outside, and I came in and starting putting locks on the front door.  I had about five locks on the front door, inexplicably.

While I was locking them, I could hear him walking around outside, and I remembered that I hadn't locked the side door...

Yeah.  Not restful.  Not restful at all.  Where is this crap coming from?  I'm watching light comedy before I go to bed, and although I'm reading 1Q84, I haven't read any of it in a couple of days.  As far as I know, nobody is actually chasing me....  I need some fluffy clouds and unicorns tonight, and none of them need to chase me at all.

Long Night

I bet I woke up 20 times last night.  There's no explanation for the restlessness that had me constantly turning over, checking the clock.  There's no explanation for the dreams, either, bad ones, the kind that usual presage horrible things coming.  I dreamed of my grandmother last night, usually a harbinger of something bad happening in my family, but she wasn't in the hospital, and she wasn't trying to tell me anything.  Instead, she was trying to give me something.  She was with my great-aunt, also gone now, and they were putting on dresses from a giant closet.  They looked happy.  Maybe that dream isn't a bad one....

The old dream I have where things happen to my house, where someone has devastated things outside, but I can't see who, was back last night.  They always leave signs that they've been there, subtle marks or pieces of broken things on the porch.  I know I am being stalked.  There's always the sense that if I could just turn fast enough or if I were just paying enough attention, I could catch them.  I know they are hiding in the treeline around the yard or sometimes even closer than that, but I can't ever see them. I hate that dream.

I'm sure all of this is just fodder for psychoanalysis, but I don't really care to walk down that path.  I just know that they disturb me.  Since when I dream, they are always vivid, I almost think I preferred it when the Topamax was keeping me from remembering any of them at all.

Now I'm awake and moving, more or less, having watched my iPhone light up and go off, taken my shower, eaten my Nutella and wheat bread, and downloaded the Josh Ritter album I've been waiting for.  (Amazon and I do a lot of early-morning business since I stopped being silly and staying up to midnight for stuff to come out, you see.)  I hope the lingering unease of these dreams will melt away with Josh Ritter's voice and the morning sun.  I can't really think of a better combination to drive out dark things from the night, actually.

It's Like This

Today, I took cleaning the house in phases.  I did about a million loads of laundry, all the finicky loads that have to be done periodically, rugs, bedding, blankets, special mini-loads of bright colors.  I vacuumed up enough Chewie fur to make about six smaller dogs.  I put away luggage, at least for the time being.  It felt good to bring order to the chaos.

There's order to the mental chaos, too.  I feel sharp and focused, not drifting or sad.  I feel like I have a direction and a goal now, and I haven't felt that way for a long time.  Lately, I have been sorting through the debris in my head, tossing out the bits that don't work, reordering the pieces I want to keep, putting away the new material.  I have a sort of a three-step plan for where I'm headed, and whenever I know where I want to go, I do so much better.  I can stay focused on getting there and tell everything else to step off.  

I have a purpose for what I want to get done in my classroom.  I will be tearing down and totally redesigning my regular English curriculum.  It will be one of the most satisfying things I have done in years.  While I am always tinkering with AP, I haven't done a major rebuild on the regular in...well...I don't know that I ever have. I have never been overly pleased with the way it functions, but there has never been time or an overwhelming drive for me to do it.  Now that I have this new approach and all this support from IREX to do it, though, I am ready to get hands on it and make it work the way it needs to.  I imagine it will take at least two years to get all the bugs out and get everything up and running the way I want it to, and of course, nothing should ever be totally set in stone, but just the thought of this functional change is good to me.

I have a purpose, too, for what I want to get done in my career.  In December of this year, si Dios quiere, I will turn in Fulbright paperwork.  While I know that program must be exceptionally competitive, I hope that my previous experience and my current qualifications will make me a good candidate.  I will not let my fears keep me from applying.  All I can do is reach for what I want and hope for the best.  Additionally, I may also let this upcoming school year be the year I do my National Boards.  I have been putting it off for a long time now, and since I have so many things that would go toward the completion of them in the works anyway, it might be a nice time to "double up," so to speak.  Even if it were offered to me, which I am almost certain it won't be, I will not be taking department chair again next year.  It's time to lay that aside and get some other things done.

I have a purpose for what I want long-range.  And really, that encompasses several aspects of my life.  First and foremost, looking down the road past the Fulbright which would happen in 2013-2014, I do really want to do something that would take me away from here.  That was brought back to me so completely and so fully when I was in DC this past weekend.  I was so happy there.  Part of it was because I was engaged in doing the thing I love most, learning about teaching well.  Part of it, though, was because I was surrounded by the edifices of culture and knowledge themselves.  I could enrich myself.  No, I'm not foolish enough to think that living in DC or any large city would be one giant museum tour, but I could access that part of that life when I needed it or wanted it.  It is important to me, and I do not have any portion of it here, or even anywhere near me.  Birmingham is as close as it gets, and as wonderful as Birmingham is, it is not even an easy day trip for me. 

Then there's the fact that I need to get myself to a place where I fit.  I don't fit here.  I am a big shiny raven who all the other birds just stare at, and I feel increasingly rude for having dropped in on them.  I am rarely able to participate more than marginally in most conversations.  I don't have young children which rules out the concerns of about 90% of people my age here.  It's not like that everywhere.  I get tired of feeling like a total freak because I haven't chosen that life.  

So it's like this, then:  I have a path, and I'm going to walk it until there's some turning.  I think, given the general state of dim illumination we're given in this life to see by, that's all we can rightly do.  If and when something else comes along to make me re-evaluate, I will sit down, consider my options, and figure out what to do about it then.  It just feels good to be moving forward again with determination.

Love Minus Zero/No Limit

The more I listen to the Jackson Browne version of this one on Chimes of Freedom, the more I love it.  As in, it makes something in my heart sigh and say, "Yes.  This."  There could be many reasons for this.  And I'm feeling a little tired and a lot not like analysis, so I guess I'll just spin it again through iTunes and enjoy it.  The last two lines are my very favorite.

_____________________________________

My love she speaks like silence
Without ideals or violence
She doesn’t have to say she’s faithful
Yet she’s true, like ice, like fire
People carry roses
Make promises by the hours
My love she laughs like the flowers
Valentines can’t buy her

In the dime stores and bus stations
People talk of situations
Read books, repeat quotations
Draw conclusions on the wall
Some speak of the future
My love she speaks softly
She knows there’s no success like failure
And that failure’s no success at all

The cloak and dagger dangles
Madams light the candles
In ceremonies of the horsemen
Even the pawn must hold a grudge
Statues made of matchsticks
Crumble into one another
My love winks, she does not bother
She knows too much to argue or to judge

The bridge at midnight trembles
The country doctor rambles
Bankers’ nieces seek perfection
Expecting all the gifts that wise men bring
The wind howls like a hammer
The night blows cold and rainy
My love she’s like some raven
At my window with a broken wing

Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music

There and Back Again

I'm home, I'm tired, and there's not a morsel of food in the house.  The dogs are gnawing loudly on their Nylabones, and the Smithsonian Folkways CD I just finished ripping of Japanese traditional music celebrating the sakura is filling the house with noises not often heard in central Mississippi.  I'm still in that odd, otherworldly place that one inhabits at the end of a profoundly good trip, and I am loath to come out of it.

It's a bit like knowing you have to come out of a warm bed on an ice-cold morning.  There are things to do, obligations to be kept, and sooner or later, you're going to have to throw back the comforter and brace yourself for the shock.  For just a little while longer, though, I'm going to pretend that the world outside my door is filled with glorious things.

This whole weekend was an inspiration because I was surrounded by teachers who know how to dream big and organizations who want to help us achieve those dreams.  I started to believe in what I'm doing again, in its importance, in its power, in the "yes" factor.  It means so much to have a group as powerful as IREX, by which I mean the State Department, really, say that I as a teacher am important enough to do something for.  My own state doesn't do that.  My own state wouldn't spit on me if I were on fire.  IREX is telling me that they will actually help me get cross-cultural exchanges together with classrooms in other countries, help to facilitate on the logistical end.  I thoroughly love these people.

In addition to the promise of better in my class practice, there was also the inspiration of being literally five minutes from the greatest set of museums on Earth.  Today after the last session and lunch I walked down to the Sackler and the Freer and feasted on ancient art from Japan, China, Iran, and more.  I saw pieces of pottery older than my whole country that I would have given fortunes to be able to lay my hands on and feel the textures of, run my fingers across the detail work of, feel the glazes of.  It was wonderful.  I took tons of pictures in the hopes that someday I might do something with them, an art project of some kind or maybe even translate those influences into pottery of my own.

Now I'm back here after wrangling with Delta and the joy that is ATL.  I need to turn up the heat a few degrees and find something edible.  I have a lot to think about, a lot I want to turn over in my mind.  It's amazing how much difference two days and three parts of the Smithsonian can make.....

Monkey Wrench

I just found something I want more than DoDE right now.  There is a new program called the Distinguished Fulbright Awards in Teaching that will send US teachers abroad for three to six months to do hands-on research and exchange.  Looking at the basic description of a person who is eligible for this program, I think I might be.  I want it SO MUCH.  The countries available are Argentina, Finland, India, Israel, Mexico, Morocco, Singapore, South Africa, and the UK.  Of those, my top three are South Africa, the UK, and India in that order. Of course, anywhere-that's-not-here is fine by me.... How awesome would it be to go, teach, and do research in one of those three places?  Applications are due in December of this year for the 2013-2014 school year.  Get ready, people.  I might be hitting you up for stuff if I need letters of rec, testimonials that I am the greatest thing since sliced bread, etc.

Star-Spangled Banner

I finally got to go to the National Museum of History today.  I have wanted to go for years.  Of all the Smithsonians, it is the one I  was most interested in.  It was everything I had dreamed it would be and even more, somehow.  I could have spent days in it.  I would like to go back.

I started in the section about transportation and electricity, and I thought about my father, his passion for current and his job.  I thought about the huge Corliss steam engines sitting silent now, still, in the Soule factory in Meridian as I walked past their big yellow brother there in the Smithsonian's halls, and I felt a moment of pride that I had seen one of those turning, actually working instead of just sitting as an exhibition during the Live Steam Festival.

There is no way to relate it all.  It is still turning over and over in my head in a glorious avalanche of overload.  I saw a Civil War horse preserved by taxidermy and the pajamas of a dead President.  I saw the first Kermit the Frog and artifacts from the Pullman Porters.  I saw Dorothy's ruby slippers and a resurrected Revolutionary War ship.  The collection covers who and what we are in all the nooks and crannies of the American soul.

No object moved me as much as the centerpiece of the collection, though, the huge flag draped so carefully in that darkened room, the classic and archetypical Star Spangled Banner.  One walks down a darkened hallway, slightly cool with little white lights guiding you toward the main exhibit.  Along the walls of that passage are the bits and pieces of war, a rocket, a bomb, the things Francis Scott Key was writing about when he made our national anthem.  It brings the song to life even for the most casual of observers in a way that it never has before.

Once one rounds the corner, though, there it is lying in state, vast, majestic, silent in its protective slumber.  The light is soft, blue, and somehow seems to come from within it.  Even though it is actually just tattered and frayed wool, the symbolism attached to those fragments of fabric have imbued it with something beyond its core components.

There is a bench down the wall in front of it so one can sit for a moment and take it in.  This is something you should do if you go, because you are not just looking at a flag, really.  You should sit down and really think about all the things it stands for as that gentle light it breathes out enfolds you.  There is something mystical about it, something dreamlike.  Maybe it's because it is something that has lived through war or known damage and lived to tell the tale.  Maybe it is because it is something that was made to serve selflessly regardless of the cost to itself, to use itself up.  That we have it at all is a miracle of preservation, after all....

We have problems and battles aplenty in our nation.  There are bad people here, crooks, thieves, charlatans, and tyrants.  That flag suggests, though, that at our base metal, we can be something better.  Perhaps we all need to go through that room more often and sit in its light and be reminded of what we should be about instead of what we're currently pursuing.

Misc.

• I got my car back today after about two weeks without it.  I drove it like a fighter plane on the way home to test it out.  It was so nice to be back in the seat of my little vehicle again.  
• I need to pack.  I hate to pack.  I have not packed.  I have to pack.  I don't want to pack.  This is a problem.....
• I think I almost might have a plan figured out for the next two years.  Maybe.  If nothing throws a monkey wrench in it.  This pleases me.
• I'd tell you more.  It seems like there is more to tell, but now I really do have to get up from here and pack.  Somebody come do it for me?

My Valentine.... (Who's Feeling Young Now by Punch Brothers)

...was downloadable, the very best kind.  Who's Feeling Young Now by the Punch Brothers came out today.  I've been waiting and waiting, and when I got up this morning, I went straight to amazon and downloaded it.  Fan-freaking-tastic.  Birthday yesterday and Punch Brothers today.

Punch Brothers only gets better.  Their sound is somehow only more and more refined.  Their first outings together as "The Band" were good on How to Grow a Woman from the Ground, and Punch was awesome as was Antifogmatic, but here there is a smoothness and evenness that the others were only leading up to.  It just flows.  The playfulness I love in them is clearly present in songs like "Patchwork Girlfriend" but there is...I don't know...a maturity to it, maybe, that I find appealing.

The technical mastery that makes me stop what I'm doing in sheer awe leads off with "Movement and Location."  I saw them do that one in Birmingham, and damn if it doesn't still make me sigh.  They're just so good at what they do, technicians and craftsmen of their instruments.  It's so wonderful.

I'm still feeling my way through my favorites, a process that's like trying to decide what diamond is better or worse, but I have a couple of early front-runners.  Predictably, one I like is one Josh Ritter co-wrote.  "New York City" is one of those emotional places I've been.  Again, listening to it I find myself wishing for a Ritter/PB tour....  Another early favorite is "No Concern of Yours" for the lyrics.  They cut just like a thin sharp blade.  The one I laughed when I heard, though, and said, "Yes.  This," was "Don't Get Married Without Me."  When they did it in Birmingham, I sort of saw myself in it.  "Help yourself to whatever you like with whomever you like/ but don't get married without me / Let's not fool ourselves / Cause we aren't cowards / We aren't liars / We're just two people who aren't in love / right now."

Likely, though, my favorite so far is "Soon or Never."  It's short, but the words are gorgeous.  "If I have ever seen your lips move and known you couldn't say/ The words I think could make me love you/ And heard them anyway/ And heard them anyway/ Then I have not been/ I have not been in love /I rise as the sun goes down and I pray my true love and I find a way to each other soon or never."

When I saw Thile, Pickles, and crew in concert a couple of weeks ago, in his patter, Thile said something about the 14th only being important because the album was coming out.  I have to agree with him.  I got nothing else for today, but really, what else could I ask for?  This was a gift of love enough from a band I love in return.  Thanks, guys.  It was much appreciated.

Cheesy Does It

If I said you have a beautiful body would you hold it against me
If I swore you were an angel would you treat me like the devil tonight
If I were dying on thirst would your flowing love come quench me
If I said you have a beautiful body would you hold it against me
~ Bellamy Brothers
_________________________________

I was coming home from getting a banana shake after church tonight, and as I flipped through the radio stations in my borrowed vehicle I stumbled across this old, old country song. It made me laugh. It's just so....cheesy, riddled with bad pickup lines as it is.

It reminded me of this guy I used to know in college who collected back pick up lines as sort of a hobby. Every time my best friends and I would see him, he'd have a new one to try out on us. They were fabulously awful. From the classic, "Hey girl, you must be tired. You've been walking through my mind all day long," to the oldie but goodie, "Did it hurt?" "Did what hurt?" "When you fell from heaven...." to all the others he had stored up, they were always good for a laugh and a groan.

Where do these things come from? They seem to have been around in Shakespeare's time as well, and I wonder just how far back you could go and find them. That might be a good research topic, actually. How long have men been trying to pick up women with cliches? How long have women been laughing and letting them do it?

It just amused me. I guess we're silly on both sides of the equation. As long as everybody involved is laughing, no blood, no foul.

Why I Love Him

I'm teaching Hamlet again just now, and this image rolled through my Tumblr feed yesterday.  I laughed and laughed, shared it in a couple of places.  It made my day. It is, of course, the stereotypical image of Hamlet, all blond and brooding holding Yorrick's skull.  There's the obligatory mention of one of the play's major themes, insanity.  It's quite nice, really.

Hamlet is one of my perennial favorite literary works.  I suppose that probably makes me something of a stereotype myself.  Imagine that, an English teacher who likes Hamlet....big shock!  I won't pretend to sneer at it, though, just because it's often-taught or often-loved.  It is too wonderful for that.  I know some of my former students probably wish I loved it less, but, well, some of those same people have gotten through college classes on the notes they saved from their time with me, so....

Hamlet himself is my second-favorite literary man (number one being John Faustus in Marlowe's The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus....bet you thought it was Darcy, didn't you?  Ha.  No.  He's number three, actually.  The Elizabethans top Austen, believe it or not.) for a variety of reasons.  I feel such compassion for him throughout the play.  His whole system of beliefs is attacked repeatedly.  His father, his own personal god, has been attacked and is suffering in the afterlife.   Hamlet himself is betrayed by almost everyone that matters to him.  He does things that seem right to him at the time but have consequences that profoundly change him and everyone around him.  Little seeds of evil blossom and grow, send out roots that pull down everything, and all his efforts to the contrary cannot stop it.  He feels like most of us feel, I think, when we realize we are, despite all our skill and strength and intelligence, caught in a situation we really can't do a damn thing about:  scared.

Ultimately, he comes to the realization that all he can do is live each day the best he can, do what he believes to be the right thing, that "the readiness is all."  Hamlet reaches a point where he becomes content with his own behavior and stops questioning every single action and thought so that when death inevitably comes for him he has no regrets.  He has had to go through an almost literal hell on earth to reach that revelation, and when he's talking to Horatio about it, it's heartbreaking but one of the most beautiful scenes in literature to me.

He has moved from "To be or not to be," and a place where he'd take his own life if he weren't so afraid of what comes next to trust in his own actions and no fear of whatever will come because he is satisfied with himself and the choices he makes.  He doesn't have to be afraid of death anymore because he is living his life in such a way now that he is ready for it whenever it comes, the good and the bad.  He will have no unfinished business.  He has conquered the indecision that has kept him from being the great man he was always on the verge of being the whole play.  He is no longer afraid of his own mortality.  The brevity of life has been driven home to him brutally as he has taken life and as those he loves have been stripped away one by precious one.  He knows that in the time he has, however long that may be, he must act instead of just being trapped in his thoughts.

Of course, we know what comes next.....

I love Hamlet, then, for the journey on which he goes and on which he carries us.  I can't think of this play ever as cliched or worn out.  Every time I come to it, I find something new to take away with me.  If a work does that after this many years of dealing with it, then I think it deserves all the press it gets.  He's going to stay my Valentine this year.  Well, one of them, anyway.  (And what that says about me and my psychology, I don't even want to contemplate, thankyouverymuch.)

Unexpectedly

We outgrow love like other things
   And put it in the drawer,
Till it an antique fashion shows
   Like costumes grandsires wore.
~ Emily Dickinson
______________________

My power went out today, and as I was pulling books off the shelf for something to read while I waited for the linemen to come out and figure what squirrel-accident had caused it, I laid hands on a very old Dover Thrift Edition called Great Love Poems. Since it is almost the Day That Shall Not Be Named, I sort of smiled to myself and took it down along with Pride and Prejudice, the volume I actually intended to peruse.

I noticed that I had dog-eared pages in the poetry collection, and I became curious. I long ago stopped doing that because of the damage it does. Now I use post it flags or something removable instead. I looked at the pages I’d turned down, though, to see what had moved me at the time. Predictably, all of the poems were full of yearning and unrequited love. I had no idea how old the book was until, rather unexpectedly, a photo fell from where it had been tucked in at one of the turned-down pages near the back.

And there he was. Strawberry blond hair pulled back into a ponytail that would curl just at the ends, but as was so often the case, some of it was starting to escape. Sitting cross-legged on the edge of that low stage, he had his Martin guitar in his lap, those beautiful hands were engaged in tuning it. The ever-present brown leather sandals and beat up, worn-in jeans finished the picture. The whole of him was there, unexpectedly and rather unceremoniously dumped into my lap once again.

I picked it up gently, as if it were some ancient thing that might come to pieces in my fingertips, and I looked at him. I can’t remember now even how that particular picture got taken. I know I must have been on one of the couches at the front that were our usual seat just from the angle, but I really have no memory of shooting that photo. Even less do I remember tucking it into that book next to the overly sentimental poem that has sheltered it all these years. Yet I must have done so, and I probably did both with strong feeling in my heart for him at the time. Everything I did related to him had such strong feeling attached to it….

I continued to page through the book, and then I slipped his photo back where it had come from. It seemed the right thing to do, almost like laying an artifact back in a protective case or putting something back inside a time capsule. This object has no relation to the me I am now, but it did relate to the person that was me once. I cannot deny that there once was a girl who loved that boy, and she sat on a blue couch, watched him play a guitar, and she took a picture of him. When he finished playing, he probably bounced over, sat next to her, and they had a really good time. Or not. Maybe that was one of the nights he sat with somebody else or ignored her because he was in a bad mood….

And then, as always, once I closed the book, I began to ponder. I look back at the depth of emotion I had for him, the strength of feeling that made me turn down those page corners, and I wonder sometimes if I am capable of feeling that for anybody else again. I wonder if I should, if it is a good thing or a bad thing to have that depth of feeling for a single person, a flaw that should be remedied altogether or simply something good that was applied to the wrong situation. Was it in me or in him that the fault lay? Was I deficient or was he? This is the last of the questions I need an answer to, the one that through the years has made me doubt, and ultimately, the one I know I will probably never get resolved. I guess I’m glad I’ve come so far from the girl who put that picture in that book, probably with tears and sighs, but I wonder if I will ever be able to lay aside the fear and the doubt as well.

Birthday Presents

Every year I'm asked what I want for my birthday.  There are only three days left now, and what I want most this year is nothing anybody's money could buy.

I'd like to look out my door and see you standing there, a complete surprise.  You'd come in without a word, slide those beautiful hands up, draw me to you before I can even ask you why you're here, and kiss me.  I'd like it to be such a kiss that I forget all my usual objections, that all my little dodges, quick-witted diversions, and outright lies don't even have a chance to keep me away.  I'd like it to be such a kiss that I forget that we're still just standing there in the door, barely in the house.  I'd like it to be a kiss that shuts down the part of my mind that is always a little bit uneasy and questioning, always looking for the motives behind the actions.  That may be too much to ask of any single action between two people, but it is my birthday, and I guess I do get a wish....

I want you to kiss me like it's a return to your native element, like it's a form of worship, like you're speaking a secret first language.  I want, for a brief glorious moment, not to be made the center of your personal universe because no other person should be enthroned there, but instead for mine to be knocked out of its quiet, calm orbit and sent spinning.  I want the weak knees, the racing heart, the tell-tell shiver chasing like iced lightning up my spine.  I want my hands which so often move to push away for the sake of some kind of self-defense to begin to hold, to cling.

There's a beauty to this request.  It requires some skill but no outlay of cash.  You don't even have to mess about with wrapping paper, always problematic, those stick-on bows, which never do, or try to have something shipped here on time.  Just show up, step in, and deliver.  That's as simple as I can get it.

Not Funny, Twitter

In their "Who to Follow" recommendations, Twitter recommends I follow Google Maps.  Unfunny, Twitter.  Very, very unfunny.  (And probably, I couldn't even if I tried..... Damn blinking blue dots.....)

Folding

For battlefield applications, the steel used in naginata and sword blades was required to have two distinct properties. First, it had to be flexible enough to withstand direct impacts and thrusting types of cuts without breaking. Conversely, it had to be hard enough to retain its notoriously sharp cutting edge. How could one piece of steel be both flexible AND hard? .....


Careful metallurgical examination of a Japanese sword reveals that it is composed of not one, but TWO distinctly different types of steel. It contains a soft "core", called shingane, which is made of low carbon steel. Wrapped around this is a harder "jacket" made of higher carbon steel, or kawagane. It is important to note that the finished blade is NOT a laminate, but instead consists of two separate pieces of steel which, through the forging process, have been welded together.  ~ "Blade Forging" - www.sncf.org
________________________

As always when I suffer a setback, I have been thinking, turning things over in my mind to try to put all the pieces that had tumbled down back into their proper places again.  Predictably, everything won't go back where it was originally.  That's not always a bad thing.  Sometimes things shouldn't go back at all.  Some things need to be examined and reordered.  Some things need to be be thrown away altogether.

I remember thinking last Friday that I wasn't steel at all anymore, that I had become cast iron.  It's strong to a degree, but if too much pressure is applied, if it is twisted, it shatters.  As I stared into the mirror, I felt I had somehow lost some of the essential flexibility that has always allowed me to move with change and survive.  Maybe even calling myself cast iron that day was too gracious.  It was more like heavy glue chip glass (a term that may not mean anything to you if you don't do glass).

Now, though, I am setting about the process of getting back to what I am again at my heart, and the delicacy is fading.  I am more a blade than a decorative object, made more for use than for show.  This article gives me hope in a way for several reasons in that regard.

First, even the best of blades requires a softer core in order to maintain its flexibility.  Hard all the way through would equal something that would shatter on impact.  It is the core of shingane that allows the katana to survive and slip in to places protected by hard armor.  There is a virtue in having a soft heart.

Second, to be strong, everything must be tempered and folded.  It is just a matter of how many times.  The kawagane, that hard outer shell is folded some 30,000 times.  Even the "soft" heart is folded ten or more.  To be a keen-edged and useful tool, some shaping and strengthening is going to have to happen.  I guess nobody likes the feel of the hammer or the forge, but when the edge is on and the wave pattern is complete, there can be a sense of satisfaction in all it took to get there.

I continue to sort and sift through these things in my mind, my own mental forge, I suppose, welding the two parts together, heating, hammering, making sure there is no disunity between that hardness that wants to protect and isolate, to throw down and walk away, and that other inside me that is still a little hurt, still a little sad, always wanting to see the best and do what is right, always wanting to reach for someone and save the damn world from itself.  It will be interesting, I suppose, to see what sort of markings are finally present.  I suppose, though, that this may take a very long time.

Woodpecker Necklace

I got up today and went back to Moundville for the necklace.  The weather was that sort of sun and cloud mix that makes everything a dreamlike glaze of gold.  Since my car is currently dead, I borrowed a vehicle and drove over.  The loud music and road unwinding under the wheels helped to take away some of the darkness of my mood as it always does.  Movement heals me.  In almost any situation, traveling heals.

I was a little worried that the necklace might have sold, but when I got there, it was waiting in the center of the case.  I took care of the requisite financial exchange, added a bottle of water and some trail mix, talked to the guy who had been there both last weekend and today both and remembered me coming in about the artist some more, and took myself out to the big mound, the one the chief used to live on for awhile.  I wore the necklace out.

I swear it seems like it catches and stores the sun.  It glows in the light.  It is just incredible.  The picture above is approximately to scale, and it does a good job of showing off the detail.

What I bought it for other than the loveliness, though, was the symbolism.  I have a thing for birds, it's true, but this one is more than just a bird.  When I looked up woodpeckers in Native American symbolism generally last week, I found all sorts of things they are supposed to have/be/do.  This is a compilation borrowed from here:

• Connection to the earth
• Ability to find hidden layers
• Understands rhythms, cycles and patterns
• Warnings
• Prophecy
• Associated with thunder
• The Earth's drummer
• Pecks away at deception until the truth is revealed

Basically, then, woodpeckers march to their own beat, have keen insight, and keep on persistently until they win.  They're not quite like all the other birds in the tree.  Yeah.  Sound like anybody else you know?

I'm willing to take the woodpecker on with the raven/crow.  I think they both fit me.  God knows I'm hard-headed enough to fit it.

More Gibran

The deeper sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. ~ Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

I haven't read The Prophet in a long time, but I guess I need to reread it.  I found a set of quotes from it on Wikiquote.  It's not a long book, and I should pick it up again.

This quote touched me.  There's something hopeful in it, isn't there?  I've never thought about it this way.  Maybe there is some compensation for hurting after all.

The past two days have been bad.  Friday, I felt like deep-fried death.  Everybody asked if I was sick, so I guess I looked like it, too.  The kids were all worried, but I just couldn't do any better than I was.  I was doing exceptionally well not to be in a ball on the floor.  I just told people I was sick and stumbled through.  I was, so it was no lie.  Today, I slept very, very late.  I've watched ridiculous movies and old sitcoms.  I slept through the rain.  At some point, I laughed for the first time since Thursday.

I have been in this place before, all the way down.  Now, I just need to start heading back up again.  It happens slowly, little steps on the way home.  I still cannot get past the idea that I've been so wrong about what I do for so long.  That part of me is still trying to heal, and I don't know how long that is going to take or what I'm going to feel like or be when it does.

Tomorrow, I'm going back to Moundville to get the necklace I wanted when I was there last week.  Monday and Tuesday, I'll be in Jackson for a conference.  I may take another day next week as well if I need it.  Little things.  I will get back on track.  I'm just not sure what track that is going to be.  Maybe soon I will also start to have the joy that replaces the sorrow.

Reason and Passion

For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.
Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing;
And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

~ Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

So It's All Been For Nothing...

Today, the brother of a former student who is now mine as well was commenting on his essay score, unhappy with the way his have been going, I suppose, and mentioned that his brother's used to be much higher when he went through the class.  I told him that was possible as I hadn't served as a Reader at that time.  I used to grade way too high, especially in the beginning.  Serving as a reader and getting some years as an AP teacher under my belt have helped me get my scoring in line with the test's demands.  Nothing helps "calibrate" like being a Reader.

Then he said it.

(and this might not be verbatim, but it's really, really close) "Yeah.  He said he didn't really learn how to write until he got to (his university)."

I felt like somebody stuck a knife right in my chest.  Thank you for reminding me how little what I do is actually worth.  Thank you so very, very much.  It couldn't possibly matter, be of use, or worth if it happened off a college campus, right?  Nothing that happens in high school is "real."  Or maybe it was just bad because it happened in my classroom.  Maybe the substandard pointlessness that so failed him was all me.

The whole house of cards is falling in.  I try. so. hard.  It means so very, very much. It's not what I do; it's who I am.  It always has been.  However, I just can't keep doing this at this level when this is going to be the outcome.  On a day when I had to mediate between kids who were arguing over a cellphone one "borrowed" from the other as a "joke," have been called out over the intercom twice concerning taking attendance, and a thousand other little papercuts to my soul, I am so tired.  I just need it to be done now.  And I guess when it's done, apparently, since I am unintentionally harming instead of helping and supporting like I thought I was, maybe it's going to be for the best.

Pearls in the Mud and Red-Headed Woodpeckers

"Perhaps I'll be a bird one day, if I'm good enough
And I'll get up and fly away and give up all this stuff...

I don't need anybody
But I want someone"

~"Meheni Rachi"

Sad, tired, and my head hurts.  It happens so fast.  It steals the joy.  I kept coming back to that old phrase  today about putting pearls down and letting them be trampled.  There's a reason it's wrong to do that.  There's a reason I won't do it anymore.  Every action has its...etc., etc.

All the stress I had escaped this past weekend is bad like a horrible beast sitting on my back sinking its teeth into my neck, feeding with abandon.  I can almost reach a hand up and feel its scaly skin.  I despise this situation, and although I am doing things to change it, I have to survive it first.

I left school immediately after bus duty was over, came home, put Roux on her leash, and as I was walking her, I heard a strange chirruping bird call.  I looked up into a dead tree at the edge of the yard, and I saw a small woodpecker working on the shattered top of the tree.  Somehow, it made some of the twisting tension in my head ease.  Maybe it made me think of Moundville or the weekend I'd had or just anything other than the pure stupid crap day I had just ended.  Maybe I was thinking about all the symbolism for the woodpecker I'd looked up.  Maybe I was just daydreaming again about that beautiful hand-carved shell necklace with the woodpecker totem on it that I will probably go get this weekend at the museum shop in Moundville even if it is far more than my delicate budget can afford because I cannot get it out of my mind.  I don't know, but I watched the little bird bob and chirp for a long while before it flew away.

Today is another one of those days when I want somebody to lean against, just for a minute.  It would be nice, just for a minute.  Things are stupid today, and when they get stupid, like this song says, it's not necessarily that I need somebody, but that I want them.  Guess I will have to do what I always do, mend and make do.  God, I'm so very tired.

Dearest Gentlemen

*rant

My Dearest Gentlemen:

I am writing to inform you that in the past few days, you have managed, as a gender, to hack me off repeatedly.  Oh, I know, I do things that are ungainly, occasionally silly, and sometimes outright laughable or frustrating.  I'm entitled, right?  Last time I checked, I was still a human being...just like you.

This isn't about those things.  This is about the two tendencies you have that are going to get you smacked right straight in the face if you can't correct or restrain them when dealing with me in the future.

First, if I am trying to work on something, whether it is a computer or an essay revision, hell, I don't care if it's a fission bomb, do not come and just try to take the damn thing out of my hands without asking because you think you can do it better.  Sometimes I actually do know what I'm doing despite my lack of Y chromosome.  Now I know that may be shocking to you.  Yes, even though I am a "chick," and an English major chick at that, I can do some few paltry things with computers, especially in the educational technology setting.  I make no claims at being a "tech" or a great proficient, but there is some stuff I can do, and I don't just mean change out my desktop wallpaper.  (And, no, F., I might not have been able to set that pin the other day in Google maps, but I by God can now....)  If I'm working on a problem and you just assume you can do it better and try to take over, that's an insult.  When you come up, lean over, lay hands on, try to remove next time, you're going to draw back a maimed limb.

Second, I know I tend to get to my ideas differently than other people.  I always have.  The best way to describe it is that I don't think in straight lines always. This means that I see too many options sometimes.  Just because the way I think isn't the way you think does not mean I'm dumb.   I have a CV as long as my arm to prove that with certificates, degrees, and awards if you'd like to see them.  The upshot of all that is this:  if I ask you a damn question about something, answer it.  I can probably keep up.  If I don't understand, I will ask you questions until I can see at least the general outline in my head.  Don't look at me like, "Oh hell, this woman wants to know about X.  How can I ever make her tiny brain comprehend?"  Yeah, I know that what I asked you about may be complex.  But probably, I would not have asked the question if I didn't need to know or wasn't interested.  What is it that you think I should be talking to you about anyway?

I don't get this crap when I talk to other women, guys.  You may have noticed that we don't do this to you, either.  Well, or not.  You may be too busy assuming that we need your help or that we can't understand what you're talking about to notice.

*rant off