Dancing in the Dark

We've been having major electrical issues at school the past three days, and we've been without electricity for the better part of those days while the students were there. It's been odd. The whole campus hasn't been dark; two of the three main buildings that comprise our campus have been fine. The biggest and oldest section has been the one that hasn't had any power because one of the main breakers has gone bad suddenly. It went bad Wednesday about 3rd period, and we've been dealing with on-again, off-again outages since then.

At first, it was frustrating because of the shifting of lesson plans, but by the beginning of the second day, it was just amusing. There was no point in getting upset. After all, it wasn't something that was happening on purpose. They had crews down there trying to fix it pretty much constantly for the past three days, and somebody said they even flew some guru in from the coast. (I don't even want to think about what that means is actually wrong with the electrical in our beloved old building...)

The kids were all good, at least in my class, anyway. I don't know about elsewhere. For what I teach, electricity is really sort of optional. It's nice, but hey, as long as we can see, we're good. We raged on. I know some of the other classes, particularly our computer classes, didn't have that option, though, so I hope everything will get patched up this weekend.

This week was a challenging one, and one that really stretched everybody's flexibility to the maximum. Maybe this means we're due for something really nice as a surprise soon. This is what I keep telling myself, anyway...

The Prisoner

For my payday splurge this month, I bought the box set of the original series The Prisoner. I'm going to dole them out bit by bit until I the new AMC series premieres. Along with Dr. Who, The Prisoner, is one of the series that I remember from my childhood. I don't think I ever saw all the episodes, and I know I didn't see them in order. I remember being perpetually confused by it, but I think that is one of the hallmarks of the show, actually.

I watched the first one, "Arrival," tonight, and it is strange and wonderful. I had forgotten just how weird a place The Village really was, how much sinister stuff was hidden under than bright candy shell. It's a perfect example of a dystopia, really, and I might use it this year when I teach my dystopian novels.

I'm looking forward to seeing all of these originals and then seeing what AMC can do with their remake of the series. It's always risky when something old and beloved is redone, but I love Ian McKellan, and if anybody can pull of that sort of jovial and threatening demeanor that Number 2 is supposed to have, he's it. We'll have to see if Jim Caviezel can handle the brooding rebellion essential to Number 6. If so, it should be a good show.

Home Early

For about the last week, I've been staying at school late for one thing or another, as late as 7:00 the last few nights. Today, I just decided to pack it in and come home before the sun went down. It was great.

I had to walk out and leave a big pile of stuff in my room that I'll need to catch up on tomorrow at some point, but it was somehow such a relief to lock that door on it and walk away. It was almost like going on vacation, somehow, just the stacking of papers on the desk and getting out before housekeeping turned out the lights on me.

I'll go in a little early tomorrow, stay a little late, but I know I'll be happier and better off for not pushing it unnecessarily this afternoon. There's no need to be chained to that desk every second of my life.

Indecision

I'm writing this through the hazy filter of Maxalt after a sudden migraine, so if it doesn't make sense, that might be part of the cause. I probably can't blame the Maxalt for everything, though...

I'm very tired right now, tired, frustrated, and confused. I'm busy, and as long as I'm working, I'm fairly happy, but that's no great surprise. The students always make me happy. If I look away from them for five minutes, though... Everywhere things are bad, bad and, it seems, tenaciously determined to get worse....

I don't know what I'm going to do. Germany hovers in the back of my mind like something with broad wings looking for a place to land. Is this what is supposed to be next for me? Am I supposed to stay here? Do I just need to take a long vacation and sleep? What is making me feel this constant stress and pressure?

I hate the not-knowing-what-to-do. I could bull-in-the-china-shop this, but that's one shoddy approach to take to one's future, I've always thought. Maybe it just reaches a point where you have to and pray that when all the little pieces of crockery settle, you can live with the pattern they make.

On the other hand, maybe this is an exercise in patience and faith. Maybe I'm going to be shown the way if I keep looking for it. I have been before.

The thing I fear is that I AM being shown the door and that I am not realizing it, that it's going to close and that I'm going to be standing here in a situation where the water is rising all around me and there will be nothing left to do but go under. I fear that I'm really supposed to be somewhere else, and that by staying here, I'm actually doing the wrong thing because this place is home, is comfortable, is known.

I heard a song on the radio the other day from Matthew West called "The Motions" and the lyrics in part read

I don't wanna go through the motions
I don't wanna go one more day
without Your all consuming passion inside of me
I don't wanna spend my whole life asking,
"What if I had given everything,
instead of going through the motions?"

This is almost pure Thoreau, of course, but it's always been a philosophy of mine. I found myself sitting in the car in a parking lot, and I had to ask myself in my current frame of mind how long it's going to be before I might wake up one morning and be just going through the motions. I couldn't bear it. I couldn't live with myself if I did.

So now the question is stay or go. Find a way to refresh this life somehow or move on to another somewhere else. And the agony is that I just can't get any clear sense of what the right thing to do right now is. Maybe that in and of itself is my answer. Maybe if it really were time to spread my wings and fly away, then I would know it with the clearness of a silver bell ringing. I just don't know.

The Zen of Cleaning

My house has been getting steadily worse over the past couple of weeks, floors needing the steam cleaner and the "real" mop instead of the Swiffer, piles of stuff everywhere needing sorting, recycling needing to be taken to what passes for a recycling center around here, books needing to be reshelved where I've pulled them down to read this or that or where I've finished reading them, and of course, the incredible and unending mess caused just by having pets. I've been sick the past couple of days, but today I felt much better, and I decided that today was a good day to clean the house. I threw the rugs in the washing machine, rolled out the heavy-duty vacuum, and got at it.

Just doing the carpeted floors with the heavy-duty vacuum and steam cleaner takes about three hours, but I usually hate to do it. Just getting all the equipment out and assembled is cumbersome. The vacuum is a Rainbow, so it uses water, too, and so just filling the reservoirs, changing the water, cleaning, and so forth gets old fast, but today, I didn't mind. I just wanted the house clean.

There was something meditative, too, about just clearing my mind and moving the machines back and forth across the floor. I wasn't responsible for anyone else's progress. I didn't have to fill out any forms or paperwork on it. I could just track my progress by the wet carpet and the dirty water pouring down the drain.

I still have a lot to do; there are fixtures to scrub and the big mop job still hasn't been done in the kitchens and baths because I ran out of energy. I'll finish it up tomorrow and have the satisfaction of starting the week with a really clean house. Who knows? Maybe this spurt of domesticity will extend so far as to cooking something as well. I don't know...that might be taking things too far....

Alive, If Not Kicking Very High

A short post and then to bed. The crud has got me. I am feeling much better tonight, but yesterday, I slept all day except for brief forays into consciousness to dose myself, drink something, and fall back down again. I dragged myself into town last night to help set up for a service project the organization I sponsor was doing, and I'm glad I did that because it was nice, but I am kaput now.

I went to school today, and since it was Friday, a day of vocabulary quizzes and finishing up the week, I was okay. I hope after a weekend of rest I'll be back at whatever it is that passes for top speed for me. So far, I haven't been to the doctor yet, so I'm happy with that, but I'll have to see if something moves in on me now that the cold is gone. Keep your fingers crossed for me....

And now, to bed. I can hear it calling me softly. The various and assorted animals around are already being bad influences. Roux is snoring on the other couch in that blissfully abandoned way that only pit bulls are capable of. I think I'm going to go see about finding some blissful abandon (although I don't think I snore...how the heck would I know, really, though?) of my own. Tomorrow will be full of cleaning and (sigh) grading.

Putting the Ick in Sick

I feel like I got hit by a truck. Help. I was sniffly yesterday afternoon, and by the time I got up this morning, it had morphed into a full-blown nastiness. By lunch, I was wanting to hole up under my desk and die. Now, I'm ensconced on my couch and drifting, full of Dayquil and misery.

I hate being sick. It just, to use some perfectly blunt language, sucks. This time, though, I decided not to do what I usually would. I decided to go ahead and just arrange for the substitute today before I left school. Normally, I would have waiting until in the morning to make the command decision about the sub, but I feel so crappy today and tomorrow's agenda includes something that does not require my presence in any way, form, or fashion, so I decided to take the day to try to beat this thing down.

I hope a day of sleep will kill it. If not, I'll have to load up and go sit in the clinic until they can shoot me and give me a prescription for some antibiotics. Oh, how I do so hope to avoid it....

Mockingbird

I got an email yesterday asking me to be a part of a panel discussion happening before a performance of a play version of To Kill a Mockingbird at our local performing arts center. I agreed to do it, and much to my surprise, I managed not to make a total fool out of myself.

The play performance was quite good. I wasn't sure what to expect when taking a beloved work of literature and making something for the stage of it. The key scenes were there, and many of the best lines were preserved. It felt like Mockingbird, most importantly, so I think it was a success.

It amazes me how important this book has been to so many people and how many people view it in so many different ways. Just during our panel discussion, I could tell that there were those who viewed it as a religious experience, as an important piece of literature, as something that captures a slice of the change from childhood to adulthood, as something that preaches a doctrine. I, like everybody else, have my own philosophy of what the book is and does, but I'm pretty sure I've talked about it in a previous posting, so I won't go through that again here.

There was one lady who had a signed first edition there tonight. She had come by it through marriage and accident, but still.... It was neat to see Harper Lee's signature on it, especially since she's not doing massive signings anymore. She had a great story, and part of the wonder of the evening was everyone standing around telling Mockingbird stories. This book always pulls everyone together that way.

Johnson's Quote on Learning

"Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it." ~ Samuel Johnson

I wish he weren't right about this. I wish I could Pollyanna up and say, "No! People are constantly looking for knowledge and questing for truth!" However, being a believer in the truth, I can't quite lie to myself about this one that much, can't quite twist it into the positive. Johnson was a curmudgeonly old dog, and much of what he said sets my teeth on edge; I think of him as a "glass decidedly half empty" sort of fellow. Though it breaks my heart, I have to concede this point to him. Most people really don't want to know.

I guess I can understand it somewhat. It's not always comfortable to know something. It causes the world to shift and stretch sometimes when something new is learned. You can't always go back to looking at a person or a place, a group or an event, in the same way. The surface illusion is shattered and all the things that were hidden down in the quiet still depths come roiling up to the top, like a foot stepping in the silt of a clear pool. What richness can come from that, though, once a person gets used to the changes! And not every change has to be a bad one...

I keep thinking about Prometheus bringing that holy fire down from the mountain, the price he paid for it, the sacrifice always associated with knowledge. Today, would mankind even look up at the burning brand, or would they continue to huddle in the darkness and cold when the Titan descended? Worse yet, if he didn't sing and dance for them, amuse and entertain them, would they be the ones to punish him, cast him out?

I keep thinking of how everyone says things were better "in the good old days." I wonder if that was ever true. Clearly, Johnson thought people as a lump whole were fairly uninterested in knowing during his time, and he by frak lived in a period called "the Enlightenment." If he was writing this then, when were these "good old days" in which everyone was studious, everyone interested in learning, in knowing? I suspect they are as much a myth as the Titan who defied Olympus to bring down the gift to man.

I suppose now, as then, those embers of the holy fire have to be tended by the few who see their value, whose eyes are caught, entranced by the flickering light of its jewel-like coals. Those who value learning and knowing are like Prometheus, I guess, willing to brave any punishment to seek it out, to keep it alive, whether it's isolation from the culture as a whole, the inability to keep up with financial obligations, or whatever other eagle waits circling above. It's ironic to me sometimes, ironic and overwhelmingly heartbreaking, that so many are warmed and provided for by the very thing they eschew, that they shut themselves outside its true radiance and allow themselves to be satisfied with only a faint reflection.

Germany

It's been showing up everywhere lately, in a poem I liked, in a book somebody suggested I read, in the play I'm teaching to one class of my students, in the flag hanging randomly off the back of the SUV I passed on the interstate: Germany. Tonight after choir practice, I was talking with someone who recently returned from a year of military service there. She told me about how much she had enjoyed her posting and that they are currently seeking teachers for the school associated with the base she was on. I could make money and teach in a place where there was history surrounding me again, where I could indulge my need for the past along with getting a paycheck that might actually pay all my bills for once. The thought is a little intoxicating.

I think they would want me. I should have the qualifications. I have two degrees that would make me appealing. I have a U.S. teaching license, have taught high school for six years, have been department chair for three, and have taught AP for four (or is it five now? it's all running together on me...), so I think I am probably as desirable candidate as anyone else would be. I'd be at least qualified enough to try it, let's put it that way.

I am in a quandary. I like what I do now, where I am now, and the thought of packing my boxes and closing the door for the last time on that classroom makes me uneasy and sad. However, I know it is possible to stay in a place too long, to cling to something because it is comfortable and known when you should let go of it and leap out into the unknown to see if your wings will hold you. I also know that as recently as last week I was tempted by an ad for a new school opening in Turkey....

I wish I had someone I could really talk to about this, someone who understood and could guide me. I can't think of a single soul, though. Granted, it's not your everyday sort of situation, but still...I wish there were someone. My parents will not want me to go. They never do. Mostly, they see this sort of thing as an insurmountable impossibility even though I've done it before.

I guess I will sit and think now, brood, ruffle my feathers a little, shuffle my feet and the possibilities. I don't know what the outcome will be. I need some time before I decide whether or not it's time for the chapters of my life to change again.

Couch Naps and Other Signs of Being Old

Lately, I have the best of intentions of getting all sorts of things done when I get home in the evenings. There are books to be read, stories to be written, papers to be graded (okay, maybe not...let's get real), housework to be done...the list is virtually endless. However, once I sit down on my couch to eat dinner, suddenly, I am pulled into a vortex of sleep, and the next thing I know, it's 11:30 or so and time to drag myself free and go to bed for real.

I'm getting old. Really, really old. This has to be the reason.

Or maybe it's the frakkin' Topamax. I don't know.

I think it's age. I'm showing other signs, too. Every day when I look in the mirror, added to all my other marks of beauty are an increasing number of streaks of silver. Those amuse the hell out of me. I remember vividly when my mother's hair started to go gray, and how it seemed to freak her out. I am just hoping that if mine does go that it goes like my grandfather's did. He had a gorgeous platinum silver mane. Of course, he started out with jet black hair, so I think we have a bit of a difference in initial material going here.... Regardless, I won't be coloring mine. Maybe people will quit asking me if I'm a student instead of a teacher if I go much grayer.

Well, the couch is about to consume me. I am going to go ahead and migrate to the bed for the night. Sad, this. It's Friday night, and my big plans involve a book translated from another language and a ridiculously early bedtime, and I'm actually sort of excited about it. I think I might need to get a life....

Patterns

Rainy, gloaming Mississippi always triggers something in my memory that feels like Ireland. It makes the raven feathers of my soul ruffle and long for flight. Even now as we slide from summer to autumn, there is still a greenness that lingers, and when the misty rain veils it, it shimmers with the same look I saw when I was overseas. I wonder if this is why so many Irish immigrants wound up in this area, if they saw something of home in these plains and hills, something that satisfied them.

Of course, my friend T. from Japan always laughs and says that all places on the earth feel the same because all places on the earth are on the earth. Their fundamental sameness comes from their linking. We had that conversation bouncing down a beach road in his small SUV when I remarked that that particular corner of Japan looked a lot like a part of Costa Rica I'd been in.

I wonder if places are familiar because they really do share similarities or because we seek the comfort of the known in situations where things are different or strange. I sort of like the idea of the world being cut out of big strips of the same thing sometimes. It's oddly comforting. I also like the idea of traveling to different places and seeing what other cultures did with their version of our environment.

I'll continue to look for the little pools of other places I've been in the places I am now for whatever reason they appear. It's a way to live those trips again if nothing else.

HA!

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." ~ Bill Watterson

Thinking about the Truth

This is the Noh mask for Raiden or Ikazuchi, the personification of Thunder.


I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword. I will tell the truth wherever I please. ~ Mother Jones

I was musing in my car as I was driving home today about what would happen if we all simply told each other what we were really thinking most of the time. Would anybody still talk to anybody else? And if we're thinking these things, why aren't we acting on them?

There is a certain type of person who is forever asking me, "What are you thinking?" They then proceed to sit and stare at me like I am some sort of divine guru out of whose mouth jewels of wisdom are about to fall. It's creepy as all get out. I feel like a sideshow performer. It's sort of like, "Hey, give the monkey a banana and see if she'll do another trick." I don't know why these people seem to get such a huge charge out of this, exactly. It seems that I don't quite see things the way everybody else does, maybe, and that's amusing to some. Maybe it's a bit like paying your fifty cents and going inside a funhouse or something. Who really knows?

What I usually do is get sort of flustered, find a way to turn the conversation down a side alley, and do either the verbal version or the physical version of running away. After all, my thoughts are my own very private universe, and it's not really any of their damn business, is it? There are very few people I know well enough to open my truest self up to; most people get the equivalent of a Japanese Noh mask. Is that a dishonesty? It's not "not-me" that they see; it's just perhaps just not the fullest version of me. Everybody is this way, I'm sure... Right?

What I want to do when I'm asked that question lately, though, is smile my most dangerous smile and take off the gloves, the mask, and just answer them. "What are you thinking right now?" Hmm...well, let me just tell you. I'm thinking about how hard it is not to reach up and slap you. I'm thinking about how much I'd like to be at home on my couch reading a good book instead of trapped here in this conversation with you. Conversely, it might be something more pleasant: I'm thinking about what his lips might taste like, feel like pressed to mine during a first kiss or what the view looks like right now from the dancing balcony at Kyomizuydera. It could be really nothing at all, in fact. I'm thinking I have to go to Wal-Mart and get cat food or I'm going to have really angry animals at home tonight. I'm thinking the air has gone out of that stupid back tire again. So rarely is the truth provocative or even mildly interesting....

There are times, though, when telling the truth about what one is thinking is critical. I spent too many years holding back my true feelings about things, thinking for some reason that I was not entitled to express those feelings, that I didn't have the right to those emotions, particularly the ones related to being angry about things or upset. If something made me mad, I tucked it away. It was my fault. I did it. If somebody hurt my feelings, I turned it inward. It took me a long time to learn that everybody has a right to tell the truth sometimes, and that truth may involve being legitimately, righteously hacked off about something. It took me a long time to see that telling that truth was a better way of dealing with something that trying to shove it all in a box inside me and ignore it.

I try to live my life by the quote at the top of this entry now. I don't run around bashing people over the head with "The Truth" like a club, but if you ask me, I'm pretty much going to tell you, yes, even if the answer is about that kiss or the cat food I need from Wal-Mart if I know you well enough. If not, you may have to settle for the Noh mask smile. That is another kind of truth, and while you may not find it satisfying, I guess sometimes you should probably just consider yourself lucky and move on.

Migraine Attack

Yesterday I was sitting at my desk trying to get some work done before the end of the week when it felt like someone struck me across the back of the head. I was talking to one of my teacher friends at the time, so luckily I wasn't alone, but it was horrible.

Almost immediately, the Topamax kicked in and so instead of screaming in pain, I was floating outside my body. I don't know which is worse. As always with my headaches, I lost words and started sounding like a three-year old trying to string sentences together. All light became my enemy and my room was way too hot. All I wanted to do was lie down on the tile floor and die.

I managed to get to the drawer where I keep my Maxalt and take one of them, and even though I hate the way they taste and the completely disconnected way I feel after I have to take one, I will say this for them: if I get to them fast enough, they work. I stopped feeling as if the back of my head was being pounded out and started just feeling numb.

I couldn't drive at all, so I was basically trapped at school. Even as impaired as I was, I aware that I shouldn't try to drive. I've done it before, mind you, but as bad as that was yesterday, I couldn't have made sense of the traffic around me or of the basic machinery of running the vehicle. I hate that. I hate the stupification of the headaches. They make me so dependent on others, something I almost never am, something I loathe being.

I called my mother and fortunately she was still in town even though she gets off work earlier than I do. She was able to come and get me, and so I toddled downstairs from my classroom to the waiting minivan with all my stuff like a good little preschool child. I hate these headaches. They take everything from me, my words, my independence.

I came home and got in the bed. Cats, of course, spotted a prone figure and piled up with me, warm and comforting, and since I was inexplicably cold, it was nice. I slept about three hours, got up for awhile to read and eat a comforting bowl of grits, the only thing that didn't sound nasty, then I went back to bed.

Now, after a long night's sleep, everything seems to be reset. Maybe the system is ready for another month of pain-free operation.

My greatest wish for these headaches is that I could find a medicine that wasn't almost as bad as the disease. The Topamax makes me so forgetful, makes me forget names of people and things, and the Maxalt, when I have to take it, shuts me down almost completely. I guess this is all to keep me humble, to remind me that I'm not Wonder Woman after all, and I should just bear it with patience. That's hard for me, though. I'm not known for my patience. Maybe this is my chance to improve.

Seven Hundred Posts

This is my seven hundredth post as a blogger. I suppose I should commemorate this auspicious event in some way, hang a sign, post a banner, put up an interesting picture or something. Maybe.

To tell the truth, until I got ready to post, I didn't even know this one was number 700. I can't believe I've had seven hundred things to say. That's kind of hard to believe.

This little space has been good to me, though. It's been a helpful outlet, and as I look back over the past few years with it, I can see several changes in myself since I first started writing. It's always good to see that kind of thing if nothing else.

As my blog turns 700, I am glad I kept writing it when I considered shutting it down two years ago. I think I really would have missed it. (And Heavens only know what all those poor people constantly searching my blog for Beowulf's Boast would do...)

Used Up

Today I feel used up, like a crumpled piece of notebook paper left under a desk after the last bell, like an empty box of Kleenex waiting to be discarded, hollowed out, useless, everything that was good in me taken, consumed, only the shell left. I know it's a phase that will cycle, but while I'm in it, it's a horrible place to be.

Indifference and apathy are like big heavy boots crushing my spirit, and I don't have the requisite reserves right now to spring back from it. I know better than to focus on it, know better than to let the few distract me from the many, and yet.... I need to recharge somehow; I just don't know how. It's so hard to keep pulling rabbits out of hats sometimes.

I'm just tired. Maybe sleep is the answer. Maybe a night of rest will fix all that's wrong.

Gwendolyn Brooks Poem

This is by Gwendolyn Brooks, and as with many of her wonderful poems, it fills me with that ice-cold fever and admiring longing that makes me wish I'd come up with it myself.


To be in love
Is to touch with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
You look at things
Through his eyes.
A cardinal is red.
A sky is blue.
Suddenly you know he knows too.
He is not there but
You know you are tasting together
The winter, or a light spring weather.
His hand to take your hand is overmuch.
Too much to bear.
You cannot look in his eyes
Because your pulse must not say
What must not be said.
When he
Shuts a door-
Is not there_
Your arms are water.
And you are free
With a ghastly freedom.
You are the beautiful half
Of a golden hurt.
You remember and covet his mouth
To touch, to whisper on.
Oh when to declare
Is certain Death!
Oh when to apprize
Is to mesmerize,
To see fall down, the Column of Gold,
Into the commonest ash.

I Love Lucy -- Charm School

I'm watching an I Love Lucy marathon, and currently there's an episode I've never seen, The Charm School. While I don't like every episode of Lucy, this one is making me laugh non-stop. Lucy and Ethel are trying to become classy and upper-class women by going to a school to learn "charm." You can just imagine...

I can't take Lucy all the time, but sometimes I'm just in the mood for it. I have my DVR set to keep five episodes recorded at all times so when I do feel like it, I have it ready. Tonight it's perfect for relaxing, for unwinding my tired brain. Maybe it will help me fight the effects of the full moon so I can sleep instead of staring at the ceiling, or, if I do sleep, maybe this gentle slapstick will keep me from having such bizarre and disturbing dreams.

This Is a Test, This Is Only a Test

I’m trying the Windows Live Writer software just now, so there’s no telling, really, how this post will turn out.  I am deeply skeptical of all things Windows makes.  However, if this works, it might be useful in certain situations where I don’t have internet access but would still like to blog.  Of course, I guess I could just cut and paste from a word processing document like a normal person, but hey, here’s a gadget and you know how I am about those.  Anyway, I do have other things to do tonight, and I know when I push the post button and this doesn’t go, I’m going to be frustrated and distracted, so I think it’s about time to end here.  Get ready for the “big scream”…..

Keeping Life in Perspective

Humor is a reminder that no matter how high the throne one sits on, one sits on one's bottom. ~Taki

The Postman Always Rings Twice

There's no thief like a bad movie. ~Sam Ewing

I'm watching the noir classic The Postman Always Rings Twice. I have never seen all of it because the only time I tried to watch it on TCM, my satellite dish was still in its old location and a heavy rainstorm came in causing my reception to disappear right at the end. In my foraging in Sam's yesterday, I found a four movie collection with The Maltese Falcon, Dial M for Murder, The Big Sleep, and this in it.

TCM has been putting these collections out periodically for awhile now, and this is the second one like it I've bought. I LOVE them. The other one has Philadelphia Story and Bringing Up Baby as two of the four movies on it. How great is that? They are so affordable. For what one movie usually costs on DVD, I can get four, and all four are always gold-standard films. I guess they're not "new theatrical releases," but really, who cares about that? Give me Bogart and Bacall or Hepburn and Tracey any day of the week over Saw VI. Really.

This time the weather won't stop me from seeing the end. I understand that it's a real doozy. When I'm done, I may put in Philadelphia Story. I haven't watched it in a while, and just talking about it makes me want to see it again. It's a good night for a mini-movie festival in the old living room.

Conflicting Desires

I need be writing. I have a work waiting to be finished and people who are waiting to read it.

There is a full moon outside, though, an October moon, and I want to be dancing, playing, throwing all my obligations to the stars above, letting them fall wherever they will on the dewy grass.

If you were to come and find my hidden house tonight, you would be able to hear the stereo long before you actually saw the building. It's one of those nights. I'm cranking through a new playlist on iTunes called "Bouncy." I think that pretty much says all that needs to be said. God bless the Brothers Gibb and all the derivations that the iTunes Genius and my own machinations can make from them.

Maybe reading is what I need to do. I've got a good new book. I can go sit in my library in the moonlight by the open window and watch the deer play in the pasture and read with the stereo going in the living room. This, of course, is the very lovely thing about living out in the middle of nowhere; you can play your music as loud as you like and nobody will call the cops....

As for the writing...well...it will get done. Just not tonight. I have no taste for it just now, and if I do it now, all will end badly. Better to wait instead of do it when I don't want to. Those who are waiting can just think of it as a patience-building exercise, I guess.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

I was at Sam's this afternoon buying the huge bag of dog treats needed to placate my savage beasts and all the little niceties of life I can only seem to find there when I stumbled across a digitally-remastered copy of the Charlie Brown Halloween special with the Great Pumpkin in it. It made me smile, and I threw it in the cart along with the enormous ream of colored paper and the little containers of ruby-red grapefruit I was also purchasing.

It's been years since I watched this one, but I remember it being a part of my annual Halloween rituals when I was a child. Like Linus himself (who I always identified with for some reason), I too waited on the Great Pumpkin, except of course, mine was on network TV. I don't know if it even still comes on, but I hope that it does. I like to think that kids today aren't growing up deprived of that sweet special and its message about hoping and dreaming even when your dreams don't make sense to anybody but yourself.

Today that message was especially poignant for reasons I won't go into here, so I was really glad to see that bright orange DVD box. I think I'm going to throw a Halloween party for my grown-up friends, something silly and informal, and we can all crash here in the living room and watch Linus wait for the impossible to somehow work itself out.

Throwing It Down and Walking Away

Things I enjoy have become a chore, so I'm throwing them down and walking away from them for a little while. Some of my writing, something I've been loving lately, has become a source of pressure instead of pleasure, and I can tell that in the quality of it, so I'm going to just take a break from it. I have been turning out huge chunks of stuff lately, and until the last week, it has felt good to do it. Last week, though, it started to feel like a chore, something I had to come home and do. I think I'd rather take a long vacation and come back to it with fresh eyes. Maybe it will become a joy again.

In the meanwhile, I went shopping at my favorite office store this afternoon, got Mexican takeout, and ordered a new book on my Kindle. I've been writing instead of reading lately. I am looking forward to consuming instead of producing. It will be a nice change.

The First Cool Day

I woke up this morning and it was only about 59 degrees. Tasty weather. I love autumn. It's my favorite season, and it's all too often one that we lose here in the Deep South. I love the cool mornings and evenings when I can open my windows and air out the house, listen to the crickets and frogs singing. It's wonderful. I feel energized, long to be outdoors, even willing to do yardwork.

I came home early this afternoon just so I could open up all the windows and enjoy the air. Even driving home, before I got on the interstate, I was riding with my car windows down, too. It was great. I hope we will actually have a long and wonderful fall before the wet cold of winter sets in. It would be nice for a change.

More Stuff I'm Using My iPod For

Two more apps that are making me very, very happy...

Maneki Neko Lite -- Yeah, somebody out there programmed an animated maneki neko. Love it. It gives you a fortune every day. It makes me laugh. Other than this, it is totally and utterly useless, but I now have a neko on my phone. Classic.

iBird Explorer South -- This is a field guide for bird watchers, and it is seven kinds of good. It has drawings, calls, and photos in it. I used it today while my parents and I were having lunch to settle a long-running argument we've had about whether or not a bird they've been seeing was a golden eagle, one of the ones recently released at a wildlife sanctuary nearby. Apparently it was. I also drove their dog insane with the crow call. It was a good day....

One more I'll mention, even though I only said two at the top -- I got iLava. I know that makes me even geekier than I was before, but *sigh* you know...

Banjo Sunday

I tried the banjo for the first time tonight. What a complex instrument. They always show it in the hands of backwoods idiots in stereotypical portrayals, but I am here to tell you that the instrument is not for the faint-of-heart.

I think I might love it.

I have always liked the way it sounds. There's something about the register of it that I find lovely in the right hands, Bela Fleck, Noam Pikelny, Gregory List, and those who truly love it, innovate with it. I don't know if I can teach myself to play it, or even learn it without a teacher. There are a bunch of bluegrass guys at my church, and I might get myself an inexpensive banjo, a starter banjo if you will, and go hang out with them.

It's been years since I played a stringed instrument, and they always feel so foreign in my hands. The banjo, I have to say, feels less so than any I've held. It almost feels...right. The guitar never has. I have always felt like I was fighting with it, trying to get it cradled on my body correctly, wishing that the calluses weren't necessary, and absolutely loathing the sound of them being tuned, that horrible bending of notes and pitches caused by turning the tuning keys. I love to hear guitar played, but I don't like being the one doing it. Maybe the banjo is my stringed instrument.

I feel a little funny taking up a whole new instrument here at thirty-three. I don't know why. The age thing shouldn't matter at all. I guess there is never any better time to start something new than right now, also. Maybe if I can figure out those darn finger rolls, I can at least learn to play with the guys at church and gain a new appreciation for Bela, Pickles, and the rest of those amazing artists I already enjoy.

Gun Philosophy

I believe everybody in the world should have guns. Citizens should have bazookas and rocket launchers too. I believe that all citizens should have their weapons of choice. However, I also believe that only I should have the ammunition. Because frankly, I wouldn't trust the rest of the goobers with anything more dangerous than string. ~Scott Adams

Ernst Stadler's "The Saying"

"The Saying"

In an old book
I stumbled across a saying.
It was like a stranger
punching me in the face,

it won’t stop
gnawing at me.
When I walk around at night,
looking for a beautiful girl,

when a lie or a description
of life or somebody’s fake
way of being with people
occurs instead of reality,

when I betray myself with
an easy explanation
as if what’s dark is clear,
as if life doesn’t have thousands

of locked, burning gates,
when I use words without really
having known their strict openness
and put my hands around things

that don’t excite me,
when a dream hides my face with soft hands
and the day avoids me,
cut off from the world,

cut off from who I am deeply,
I freeze where I am
and see hanging in the air in front of me
STOP BEING A GHOST!

–Ernst Stadler (paraphrase by Stephen Berg)
from The Steel Cricket: Versions 1958-1997 also found in Poet's Choice by Edward Hirsch

This poem moves me. It reminds me that all too often we find ourselves just going through the motions instead of chasing the bliss, accepting the surface explanations instead of clawing our way to the true heart. Another more literal translation of the last line from the original German is "Man, become substantial" according to Hirsch. I think I like this even better. The idea of becoming substantial, becoming someone who is aware, someone who matters, someone able to stand for something.

I wish I had time and an opportunity to learn German (as, I suppose, I wish I had time to learn all the languages) so I could read this poem in its original. I have a feeling that every line is a powerful as this one, and I hate that I'm shut out of that by the linguistic barrier. Maybe I can find a way to do that on my own, with a book or something. That would be a great way to work on being substantial, I think, to start appreciating the world on a deeper level.

Ah Well, It Isn't Moonlight and Roses, But....

Staffordshire Hoard

I am teaching Beowulf again right now, and this news article was posted to an electronic teacher group of which I'm a part. A guy with a metal detector found a cache of Anglo-Saxon gold that is actually larger than the 1939 Sutton Hoo treasure. It's amazing. There's even a folded gold strip with writing on it, a Bible verse. That's the thing you see in the picture at the top of my blog tonight. The archaeologists, of course, are about to come completely unglued with it since it's one of the first major finds since Sutton Hoo for the Anglo-Saxons. I can't wait to see what it teaches them, how it will inform what we know about Beowulf and the culture that surrounds it. What a neat time to be alive! If you'd like to see more of it, then click here.

Wishing for Clarity

Lately, I've been having that "something's missing" feeling again, that feeling that I need to be going or doing or seeing something else. It's itchy feet season for me, and I know it will only get worse as October progresses. I don't know why it's always this time of year when I start looking off and away to the horizons, start to feel my wings flutter, wishing to unfurl and carry me far away.

I want to see something that isn't here. I want it so badly that I can taste it. I want it so badly that I'm dreaming of it, dreaming of putting my old backpack on and becoming a face in a crowd somewhere, jetlagged and awestruck, sliding through a throng of people in a place where I don't speak the language to see something older than my country. Alternately, I would also be happy taking the same backpack and going to a place where there is practically nobody, sitting on a hillside and watching nature explain itself for a few days. Just somewhere else, some other nature.

I wish somebody would just show up at my house, throw me in the back of a vehicle, and take me out of town for a few days. Every time an opportunity has come up for me to go and do lately, something has come up to prevent my taking advantage of it. Maybe if somebody just kidnapped me, I wouldn't be able to come up with an excuse. I need to get out of my routine, out of myself for a little while, and sometimes the only way I can escape all that is to get away physically.

If I don't go somewhere soon, the Stupids are going to kick in, and God help us all if my reckless side gets a chance to bare its teeth and come out to play.... The decisions I make when the Stupids kick in invariably go something like this, "Yeah. Okay. Why the ($#* not? Might be fun. Sure." And while that's a great attitude to have sometimes because it keeps your mind open and allows you to have new experiences, the little sensor upstairs should always be active. When the Stupids kick in, the little sensor folds up his chair and goes home for about a week, so just about everything not involving illegal substances suddenly sounds like a good idea. That's how I wound up with T., one big, bad, serious case of the Stupids. Had the little sensor been doing his job, I would have run far, far away from that whole thing...

Therefore, I think I have to plan some kind of trip soon for public safety. Otherwise, gentle readers, it may be up to you to come after me with the butterfly nets when the Stupids get me. All I'll ask of you is that you please be gentle.

Gorgeous Voice

You may have read my brief commentary on the Four Corners free sampler from Amazon the other day. On it, I found an artist named Sara Tavares. Her voice and acoustic guitar are absolutely haunting. She is from Cape Verde, a nation I am ashamed to say I knew nothing about until I used Wikipedia to correct my ignorance. I recognized her lyrics in some of the songs as Portuguese, one of my favorite languages I don't speak, but I was off about the location of her origin. I'm sure there is also Kriolu, the Cape Verde Portuguese Creole, there, too, but I don't know enough about Portuguese to sort it all out. It's all so liquid and lovely to my ears that it doesn't make an appreciable difference, anyway. I love Portuguese, so I bet its derivatives are beautiful, too. Anyway, check Sara out. Her stuff is gorgeous.

Weather, Again

Seems like I'm blogging lots of storms lately, but if you could just see the one out my window right now, I think you'd agree that it's blog-worthy. Geez....

I stayed at school too long this afternoon trying desperately to get stuff done in my usual fashion, and when I looked up, the lazy sun was gone and the roiling black clouds of destruction were coming over the horizon. I think I'm just going to wait it out here for awhile. I don't fancy trying to drive in all that.

Oh well. I'm sure I can find something to do. I just wish I didn't feel quite so much like crawling under my desk to do it....

Monday

It Monday-ed on me. I feel like I've been beaten up. I wish I had somebody I could come home to, curl up against, feel strong arms hold me. Is it weak to wish for this? Part of me thinks so... The warrior in me thinks I should pick myself up off the floor, wipe the blood and tears off my face and go on.

Sometimes, though, even the blade-wielding battle queen wishes there were an equal, a mate here at the end of days like this, days when I watch people walk off cliffs they'd have done better to avoid, days when I feel like I'm banging my head on the same big rocks to no useful end, days when the sun sets and I can't tell that any forward motion has been made at all, that anything I've done has made one scrap of difference to anybody. I have to say that it would be nice, really, really more than nice, to have that other around to balance me.

I don't know, really. Most of the time, I'm okay alone since it seems that this is my fate, this solitary path. It's just when the Mondays come that the alone seems too much to be asked to carry.

Storm

I'm sitting in the middle of a room full of windows on the second floor of a building in the midst of a fairly impressive thunderstorm hoping I don't get struck by lightning. This is not what I'd call a position of confidence.

Bad weather doesn't, as a rule, scare me, but the other day, I was in this same place and lightning kicked up sparks from some unknown object in the corner, so I'm a little wary. I moved a few things, metal odds and ends I was just stupid to have put so close to the windows, and I think I took care of the lightning rod effect which may actually have just been built-up static electricity rather than a direct strike, but still...

I know I need to recharge my batteries, but I don't think I mean that literally. Let's hope that changing this space around wasn't a huge, electrifying mistake on my part.

Planets

An application I've been having tremendous fun with on my iPhone touch is Planets. It's a stargazing application, but it does a lot of other things, too. It shows information about the planets and their moons, will tell you moonrise and set, sunrise and set, and also has a map showing what's currently the daylight and dark including the lights of the world via a satellite map of the globe. It's amazing. If you are interested in astronomy or just curious and have an iPhone or iPod touch, you might check it out if you don't already have it. I plan on taking mine out to my country shack when our rainy season clears out a bit more and spending some time reacquainting myself with the constellations.

Star Wars

Can I make the ultimate geek confession? I think the end of Return of the Jedi, the battle between Darth Vader and Luke and the subsequent destruction of the Emperor as Vader turns away from the Dark Side are some of the finest moments in film. Okay, so maybe it's not Casablanca or Cary Grant carrying that glowing glass of liquid up the stairs in Suspicion, but there is something so powerful about this scene.

The mythology layered in is a huge part of it. The myth of the young hero coming to confront his fallen father, coming to complete the quest that has taken him from boyhood to adult awareness, that has allowed him to test himself and pass, is wonderful no matter in which version it appears. That this story is actually the story of two men striving for definition has always fascinated me.

As much as I always liked Luke growing up, Vader was always my favorite. If you've read here much, you know I always love the monsters, anyway, and Vader was probably the first one of these to catch my attention. I love that at the very end, he gets a chance to redeem himself, to step away from all his bad decisions and be, at least for a brief moment, the man he was meant to be.

While I'm not one of those who run around espousing the "Jedi religion" or anything too crazy like that (at least not about Star Wars, anyway), I have always thought this is part of the message of Star Wars, that the possibility for redemption and change always exists, and that it can cause profound change when it happens, not just for the individual but for everyone connected to him or her as well. It's a powerful message, and one I personally believe to be true. I guess it's one of the reasons I always watch the films and why I have so many little Darth Vader doodads. Well, that and the fact that they're just so darn cool...

A Wonderful Free Thing

I stopped by Amazon to pick up an mp3 this morning, and while it was downloading, I started looking at their free music samplers. Lots of them I have absolutely zero interest in, but I found two that I love: Verve Vault Presents Rhythm, Strings, and Cool Breezy Jazz Sampler and the Four Quarters Sampler of "world music" a term I hate but a sound I find captivating. These are very nice little collections for no money whatsoever, and they work fine in iTunes. Love you, Amazon. Gracias.

What’s the Difference? » Geek vs. Nerd vs. Dork

God, I love words. I love the history of them, the way they change and grow. Language is funny and fun. Here's a little Mental Floss article that entertained me.

What’s the Difference? » Geek vs. Nerd vs. Dork

Magic

I think I said I'd put this up. I still don't know if I like it. It is still evolving...I just added a line as I put it up on the blog, and I might well take it out again next time I do something with it. I may stick this one back on the back burner for awhile. Comments are welcome.

MAGIC

I’m going to conjure you

write your secret name
in sacred symbols
three times
bind it with scarlet and silver
put it under my pillow
stroke my fingers over your knotwork
in the still and silent hours

Don’t be fickle or cruel
in those moments when
the moon spills over
the world breathes
lying listening for
the rustle of wings

Amused half-cat-smile
cerulean archangel eyes
Curl those hands in invitation

The oldest magic
will bind us together
breath and soul
even if the stars
fall from the sky
tonight

One Last Post Tonight

...before I go do other things. I wrote a poem today, my first new poetry in awhile. I may put it up here in a couple of days. I think my written voice is changing. It's strange. I guess if things don't change, they die, but I don't know if I'm entirely comfortable with the evolution. Maybe it's not supposed to be a comfortable process, the becoming.... Maybe I just need to get away for awhile, get some fresh water into the pool. That's always helped in the past. Maybe I just need a good swift kick. That couldn't hurt, probably, most days.... Who knows? I am just unsettled by the difference.

The Beauty of Technology

I am constantly amazed by what technology allows me to do. I have almost a whole season of Warehouse 13 on my DVR right now, and I don't even know how much David Tennant-y DW goodness is waiting from Sunday's all day BBC-America goodness for me to enjoy at my leisure. Since TV frequently stinks or bores me, I adore this thing and can't understand for the life of me why I waited so long to get one. It's so nice not to have to worry about how long I'm gone so that the few shows I do actually care about following are waiting on me when I can get around to them.

My iPod touch is also a thing of loveliness. Apple just makes nice stuff. I am having so much fun with this little gadget. I am trying not to be tacky and run around stores and so forth with it in my ears, but I have to say it's tempting. Having all my music in one place constantly makes me happy, and the apps that Apple has allow customization on an epic scale, which is absolutely right up my alley.

Of course, my little netbook still fascinates me. I mean, it fits in my freakin' purse. How nifty is that? I love it when tech tools are powerful and small. It makes me smile. Huginn is in fact the thing I'm using right now to blog this...

A future gadget I'm interested in is the tablet Apple is coming out with. It also looks like a thing I would love. If it does half of what they say it will, it will probably go on my drool list. Maybe I can add it to my geek stash in the future, to this list of beautiful technology that makes my life better and easier.

Guys on the Porch

Each day when I come home from school, there are some older men on the porch of a certain house I pass playing a game, either checkers or cards, on a small table. Something about them warms my heart. I love that they're always there. I love that they're on the porch playing, not in a back room, not in an air conditioned kitchen somewhere. Most of all, though, I love how happy they always look. They're intent in their game in the few seconds I spend with them as I wait at the light or pass steadily by if it happens to be green, but they smile, they clap when one of them makes a great play, and the fellowship they share is tangible. It makes me want to pull over and see if they'd let me join them for a little while. It seems as though it would be a very worthwhile way to spend an afternoon.

Frisky

I've got energy this evening, the kind I usually associate with the full moon. I got a lot done at school this afternoon, braved the insanity that is Wal-Mart, and am still bouncing. I need a playmate.

I don't know what's going on. I've been tired for the last two weeks. Maybe it's been trying to get my body in the school routine. Whatever it is, I'm glad it's abated. I have to catch up here, and I have some...other writing...to do, too.

Right now, it's off for some red beans and rice, though. Food actually sounds good for the first time in about a week, so NOM!!!

Old Arguments

I heard the old When Harry Met Sally argument revived the other day that men and women can't be just friends, that there always had to be more going on than this between them. I hear this all the time, but I don't think it's true. I wonder where it even started.

I've had lots and lots of male friends who were just friends. When I think of it, I would say that some of my very best friends have been guys, and as far as I know, neither of us in the friendship were pining away with love or desire. (Of course, there were one or two cases where things did go completely to crap, but....)

Now it may well be true that friendships between the genders are different somehow than the ones forged between members of ones own gender. I am more comfortable telling my guy friends some kinds of things and my girl friends others. My guy friends tend to share my geek streak more than my girl friends do. I've held on to most of my girl friends over the years, and while I still think highly of those guys, I don't see them much anymore now that we're all rotating into the "family years."

I just refuse to believe that you can't have a guy friend, that the relationship is always somehow doomed. I have always rejected that. I have to rely on my own past experience here and say that premise is a false one. I may be an oblivious, cerebral, and detached Aquarius who frequently has to have certain elephants in the room pointed out to her, but I think I would have noticed if they were dying for love of me, surely....

Nanci Griffith

And when he dies he says he'll catch some blackbird's wing
And we will fly away to heaven
Come some sweet blue bonnet spring
-- from "Gulf Coast Highway"

I got to see one of my all-time favorite artists in concert last night. Nanci Griffith came to our local performing arts center. She was every bit as good as I had hoped she'd be.

I almost missed it. I forgot about the concert until the night before. I got on FB and my friends were talking about going, and the local center, which I follow on FB, had a post about the pre-show social and goings-on. I started kicking myself hard for letting school eat my soul again and make me miss something I really wanted to do. I was able to call yesterday and get a left over ticket, though, and it really worked out pretty well because I got one of the released artist's tickets, so I was sitting in very, very good seats.

Nanci was delightful. I can't get over the fact that she used to be a kindergarten teacher. I didn't know that until I looked at the program last night. It fits, though. I could see that in her.

Every song she sings, whether it's one she wrote or one she chose, has words that take my breath. They are all songs that make your brain and heart engage. I admire and respect her so much for that.

She's been a favorite of mine since my freshman year of college. The guys at the Wesley got me hooked on her when we went on a missions trip that first summer. I have so many memories from that trip hooked to specific songs. It was lovely to hear her sing them last night.

I wasn't the only one who felt that way, either. The gentleman who was sitting next to me introduced himself, and he and I were practically bouncing with happiness together the whole night. From the time she started singing the first number, we just looked at each other and grinned. At one point, he leaned over and said, "Have you ever been to a concert that you had to stop yourself from singing through so hard?" I wanted to laugh because I know had just had that same thought as she did "Listen to the Radio" which starts out with what one of my friends from Indiana used to say was the sweetest lyric in all of music, "I am leaving Mississippi in the evening breeze...." I think half the theater was bobbing heads and patting legs to keep from belting it out with her. I love shows like that. At the end, we shook hands and he said, "It was nice to sit next to another real fan." And you know what? It really was.

I've got the music going on iTunes right now, and I'm sure I'll be overdosing on it through the next few days. It was a great evening. She said she'd going to come back, and while most of the artists who come to our little jewel box do return, I hope she really will. I look forward to another evening with her.

ARGH Days

Technology was the foe today. All the cables were too short. The wireless connection kept dropping at the least convenient moment. All the ethernet ports in my room have mysteriously died. The screen and projector in my room are facing the wrong way. My laptop is acting suspiciously. Everything conspired to make me frustrated and off-balance.

By now, I should have learned to let these days go with grace and a chuckle. Instead, I was frazzled by the time I got to second period. Once again, I'm doing my juggler-at-the-edge-of-the-abyss routine, and I have to stop trying to do every blessed thing in the world myself. It's such an arrogance. I'm home and tired, too tired to enjoy the things I most wanted to do tonight, of course. I'm going to work on some writing I want to do anyway. I've got the White Stripes cranked up to an obscene level. Maybe I can borrow some energy from Jack.

What I Need

...is somebody who has a good strong talented pair of hands. And who is willing to use those hands to get the knot from between my shoulder blades. I have a ball of muscle that is absolutely sore to the touch at the base of my neck. Stress does this to me. It is one of my least favorite of my body's little tricks.

The only person I've ever known who could get all the knots and kinks out was a wonderful guy I knew in college. Him, I should have married just for his hands.... He could start at the nape of my neck and work all the way down my spine without hurting me as almost everybody else who's ever tried to work my back has done. I was a big old puddle of happy goo when he was through. Yep, I should have packed him up and brought him home. Now, all these years later, I have pain and no graceful long-fingered friend to help me. Sigh...

Benten

I got my new iPod touch today, and I'm in the process of upgrading the OS and getting it tweaked out. The touchscreen is taking some getting used to since I'm a BlackBerry girl, but it's unbelievably lovely.

In keeping with my habit of naming my object after their function, I have decided to call my iPod Benten after the Japanese goddess Benzaiten, goddess of music, poetry, learning, art, and patroness of children. I'm looking forward to many happy hours with this new little pagan deity in my pocket along with Thoth (my Kindle) or alone.

Stepping Out on the Ledge a Few More Inches

Our local group of writers has an open mic night at a local coffee house, and one of my colleagues is a regular reader there. I've thought about going since I first heard of it, but something's always interfered, classes or knee or something. She brought it up again Friday while we were standing around waiting for a copier to be free, and I think I'm going to go.

I've only ever read my poetry publicly at the awards ceremonies for the competitions I've been in and at a writers' night we had for our students and staff at the school, so this will be another really big stretch for me. My first inclination is to just go and listen, in fact. I know, though, that if I don't throw myself off that cliff, I will lose my nerve and lose a chance to fly.

Of course, there will be some pieces that I definitely will NOT be reading. Some stuff will have to stay in the notebooks here at home. There are some cliffs I'm not ready to throw myself off no matter how amazing the flight down might be....

Back to the Future Trilogy

I bought the Back to the Future Trilogy today. I see the films occasionally on this cable channel or the other, but it's been a long time since I've seen any of them whole and without any commercials. It's one of my favorite 80s series, and it's a great light break for tonight. I have always loved the idea of that one definitive moment of courage that changes a person's whole life, love the transformation for Marty's downtrodden dad at the dance. The other installments of the trilogy have great messages, too, but the first one will always be the best to me.

The New School Year

Our new school year is off and running. (It seems like all I do is write in cliches, lately...oh well...) My kids are going to be a good bunch this year, and everybody just has the most positive attitude. It's wonderful. I feel better about this year than I have for a long time, not because of the people in my class (they're always quality) but because of the atmosphere outside it. I hope that it holds, that this feeling that all things are possible remains. We can do an awful lot with this.

Loss

One of the great ladies in my church passed away Thursday. She was a combination of many things to me, a fan of my rough and sometimes terrible organ playing, a friend, one of the few people left who remembers my paternal grandmother and called her "friend", someone who lived in Japan once as well and could share recollections of life there as a gaijin outsider, and the sister of my beloved music teacher. It's such a cliche to say that you never think about the last time you see someone being the last time you're ever going to see them, but that's all I've been able to think about these last two days. I didn't see her often enough, and now there are no more chances to tell stories, give hugs, or play songs. Every time I play, that pew will be empty, empty, and all those links are broken.

Old Hymns

Meant to blog this last night....

I played with our substitute pianist last night because our usual night pianist, one of my very best friends, was out of town. Since our sub isn't used to playing very often, we did some very old traditional hymns that everybody knows, and it was wonderful fun.

I love to play old hymns. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy all church music from stuff with loud guitars to stuff with loud banjos right up to stuff with loud pipe organs. It all makes me happy, and I think it all makes God happy, too. I know not everybody enjoys every type of music, but to me, it's all wonderful stuff. There's just something about playing and singing those old, old hymns, though, that moves me.

I don't have a blazing musical talent. I have friends who do, and what they can do with instruments humbles me. I will never forget as long as I live hearing one of my gifted pianist friends play his arrangement of "It Is Well with My Soul." That simple old song glowed like stained glass struck with the rising sun. It's a song I've always loved, a song I used to sneak up to the chapel at the university I attended for my undergrad and play on the piano there late at night when I felt bad. Of course, when I played it, it never sounded like his version. If anything should ever happen to me, I want him to play that at my funeral.

"Angel Band" is another one of those old hymns that affects me that way. I still remember my grandmother crying whenever it was played in church because it reminded her of her own mother. It was in due time played at her funeral, and whenever I hear it, I can hear my Granny's voice singing it. Someday, I am going to get the courage to sing that at church. Maybe I won't screw it up....

There are so many other lovely old songs that I also love, but one I frequently play for prelude is "In the Garden." I figure probably 75% of the congregation isn't paying attention to what the organ is doing anyway, and it makes me tremendously happy to hear the King of Instruments purr through that song. Playing it is a bit like singing it in many ways. It just feels good to walk the baseline in the chorus and imagine the words coming true.

Even as I continue to find new songs that I enjoy and add to my repertoire, I will always hang on to these oldest loves of mine. I know I'm never going to be a fantastic concert organist, but maybe if they're played with love and happiness, that will be enough.

...And Still No iPod

Another side effect of the unpacking has been the fact that I still haven't found my iPod. I was hoping that I would locate it in and amongst the flotsam and jetsam of my room, but as each box has been unpacked and discarded in the hall, there has been no little black pouch. I don't know what genius thing I did with it in my befuddled state at the end of last year, but I must have truly lost it.

I will wait until the end of tomorrow when all the boxes are truly unloaded, just so it doesn't turn out to be one of those O. Henry ironic things, "Oh, huh, if you'd just unpacked that one last box," but I have to try to figure out what to do now. Do I want to get an iPod or do I want to get an iPhone? I am a hardcore BlackBerry junkie, so I am loathe to relinquish my Berry for the iPhone even though they look like fun, but they have more storage for less money than most of the iPods I want. Grr...why can't my sweet little red square Nano just be in a box? I miss it so much.

Dragging

The past few days have been an all-out race to get my classroom ready. Every time I've turned around there has been ONE...MORE...BOX. I think that when I dream, I see ONE...MORE...BOX. I am coming to hate corrugated cardboard. Why, oh why, do I have so much crap in my room? I can't possibly use all that stuff, can I? I have looked at stuff as I've unboxed it, and thought about each item, but unfortunately, yeah, I do use it all, or at least I will at some point. Sigh.

The room is coming together, but I am just about shot. I finally got some of my personal stuff in today, and I think I only have two boxes left. I still have to paint my speaker's stand and get it in, a major job, but maybe tomorrow will be the day I can close my door at the end of the day and leave without feeling like I'm sneaking away from the scene of an accident.

Moving Back In

Our school has been in renovation all summer, and we can now move our stuff back in. Yesterday was the first time I've seen my classroom since the remodeling began, and I was a little nervous about what it would look like, what the school as a whole would be like now. Our building is quite old, built in the early decades of the last century, and it has a solidity and old-fashioned presence that I was afraid might have been lost.

The renovation is wonderful. Everything that was tattered and ragged has been refreshed, and nothing that makes our building warm and charming has been removed. The floors are lovely, the lowered ceilings both reflect more light and hide the ugliness of conduits and duct work that was exposed before, and all the woodwork had been refurbished.

In my classroom, the floor has been replaced with light-colored tiles, and the effect is startling. My classroom has lots of windows, so there has always been a lot of light, but now, with this new floor, the space looks so much bigger. It's wonderful. I spent three hours yesterday trying to rearrange the big pieces of furniture to decide where they should go. I think I have the basics in place now. All that remains is dragging all the many, many boxes here at the house back to school.

It's good to see the place looking so nice. I hope that when our students return, they will take pride in what they see as well. Maybe this can be a fresh start for all of us, the start of a strong new era for our school.

Following Eleanor's Advice

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt

The sky is orange fading to red, and I am full of a quiet joy. The past few days, I've been following Eleanor's advice in a small way, and I feel like I've discovered new wings to fly.

Sometimes it's so hard to face fears, so hard to do the things that really matter to me even when they are small steps, things that nobody else would even care about. When I get to the edge of whatever it is, and I look down at that sheer drop, I want to cling to the status-quo, keep my wings furled and folded even though my heart is longing for the sky. The fear of failure keeps me mute, still.

Now that I've had my little taste of flight, though, I don't think I'm going to be able to fold my wings again. That's the thing about flying; I think it's addictive.

Thoughts on Imagination

Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun. ~George Scialabra

The Novelty of It All

This weekend, I got an unexpected gift from my uncle. He gave me a check when I went to see him. The money was only a tiny portion of what he actually gave me, though. It just keeps rippling forward. I don't know how to express the fullness of what he actually handed me Saturday.

He handed me the ability to walk into the business office of the hospital today and walk out without the albatross of debt around my neck. I didn't pay all the accounts off, but I paid off four out of the five hospital accounts that had sprung up in their arcane and hellish billing since my ACL surgery. I practically skipped out to the parking lot I felt so good. Instead of spending months staring at ever-increasing stacks of paper and trying to figure out how to rob Peter to pay Paul, I actually might be able to pay it all off.

I even had enough money to go to the grocery store and buy something other than survival rations for once. I walked up and down the aisles, bought refills for my air freshener, and got two kinds of ice cream sandwiches. Luxury, luxury, luxury.

The last thing I'm going to do with my gift is get a DVR, something lasting to keep. I've been wanting one for a long time because I am so rarely home to watch the things I enjoy. It seems I am always leaving when the things I want to see are coming on. It's also the case that with this, I can remember his gift every time I use it.

The gift was a gift far beyond just simple money. He gave me relief from the things that were presently plaguing me and comfort and enjoyment for the future. I am so grateful to him. I feel more relaxed right now than I have in months.

The Power of Words

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
Philip K. Dick

Another Argument for Jeans

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.
Sir Frederick G. Banting

Lava Lamp Screen Saver

Lava Lamp Screen Saver - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

Don't ask me why because I am not remotely interested in explaining, but I got on a lava lamp kick the other day. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know kitsch is my life....) I found this screensaver, and it is really actually very nice. I am planning to order the full version later on, but the freeware was something I thought those of you who also appreciate the...um...finer things in life...might want to check out as well. The link above will take you to CNET, home of safe downloads. Enjoy, and you might let me know what you think of it, too, if it made you smile.

A Sudden Pain

What do you fear in yourself? What do you watch yourself for, dread to see, flinch away from? Is it a tone of voice, a gesture, a pattern of behavior? Maybe you have a temper, an addiction, a weakness that you can't fight quite hard enough or long enough. You're having a perfectly good day, and then suddenly the shadow moves across the sun. You stumble, only a half-step if you're lucky, a graceless sprawl if you're not. There's a moment of disorientation, blood on the palms of the hands or a skinned knee if the fall was a serious one, and that sudden pain of knowing regardless of whatever physical signs remain. That inner pain is worse, actually. The scars carried inside are always worse than the ones left on the outside because you know what they came from, something for your mind to worry itself against like a tongue against a sore tooth. After the fall comes the excruciating process of dragging yourself up again and rebuilding your careful guard against that slice of darkness which will, for a time at least, be content to recede.

The Five Most Interesting Imaginary Men

I'm more random than usual today. Who knows what backwash of energy in the neurons prompted this list, but here you have it, the official Dancing Fool List of the Top Five Most Interesting Imaginary Men, in no particular rank order:

*) Mr. Darcy -- Any literary chick worth her salt would have to include Darcy. He has probably ruined more women for real men than any other imaginary man out there. I wonder if he smirks smugly about this to himself. Probably not. He is, of course, above such things. The traits that put Darcy on this list for me are the fact that he does have such deep feelings that he fights so hard to contain, channel, and figure out. He's not a perfect man, Lord knows. He's arrogant, stubborn, and sarcastic. When he realizes that he is in love, though, he genuinely examines himself and while he remains much the same man he always was (nobody wants a doormat), he is willing to bend some when Lizzy does, too. It's a beautiful thing.

*) Dr. Who -- Sheer, raw intelligence and knowledge of worlds and more worlds coupled with madcap humour and adventure, and in the later regenerations, good looks that will absolutely melt your eyes out. If you're curious like me, could you resist the lure of the 900-year-old man in the blue box who could take you to worlds you've never seen or back to see the pyramids being built? Of course, don't do what all his companions lately seem to do and fall in love because there are some fairly nasty commitment issues at hand, the abjectly broken heart of a soldier who is the last of his kind because of his own actions, and there is always the risk that you will be possessed, kidnapped, or killed, but hey, every relationship has its little pitfalls, right? As long as you are just along for the ride, "What could possibly go wrong?"

*) Marshal Marshall Mann -- Rock steady, strong, funny, and smart, but you know, you just know that if it were necessary, this guy would be able to destroy anything put in his path. It's in his eyes behind the gentleness and the sparkle of the humor and in the angle of his body in certain situations, even when he's not holding a gun. He's a man who enjoys knowing things for the sheer joy of turning over the information in his head and playing with it. He can hold his own verbally and physically even with the best of them, and it's always fun to watch him give at least as good as he gets. He's not a sidekick; he's a balancing force, equal and opposite to his partner, and although he is not as loud and flashy as she, it would be a real mistake to assume that he's the lesser because of that.

*) Harry Dresden -- Complex layers of power, lack of self-awareness, self-deprecating humor and intelligence make Harry one of my favorite imaginary men. Those around him see him so much more clearly than he sees himself. He has power to break open creation in his hands, and he constantly tempers that power with restraint, goodness, and dry wit, much more than he ever manages to give himself credit for. Although it seems he is always put in situations that have no solutions without wounds, he strives for resolutions that will only wound himself and the ones who started the trouble orignally. Of all the series I read regularly, The Dresden Files are ones I will buy in hardback and pre-order just to see how he's going to make me laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time, in his next adventure.

*) Det. Robert Goren -- Quirky brilliance, the ability to analyze any set of information given and find connections, a passion that simmers almost always under control, and a seemingly endless base of background experiences and interests make Goren fascinating to me. There is an air of the feline to Goren, both in the way that he deals with interactions with other people and in the way that he sets traps for unwary criminals. The rare explosions of temper are feline, too, big-cat-feline-pushed-too-far dangerous. He's been a favorite of mine since the very first time I watched Law and Order: CI for both his inability to be just like everybody else and the fact that he just doesn't need to be like them, either. As the seasons have gone by, the darkness that hovered in him has blossomed, and Goren has had to deal with things that would destroy most people. And maybe, just maybe, he's been destroyed, too. That's part of the appeal, part of what breaks my heart in some episodes even while I'm shaking my head in others trying to figure it all out.

Here they are, then, my favorite fictional fellows. If you have some of your own, you might post a comment and let me know.

INFJ

I took a FB Myers-Briggs this morning (and don't you know that was the very pinnacle of accuracy?) and came out INFJ again. Every single brush with every permutation of Myers-Briggs I've ever encountered has resulted in my being INFJ. Apparently, INFJs are very rare composing about one percent of the total population. (Lookit, I'm a unicorn!!!)

I am unsure if I believe that the depths of any human being can be plumbed by using a test, no matter how many psychoanalysts have been tinkering with it over the years. However...I have to somewhat uncomfortably admit (using a split infinitive, no less) that a lot of this information in this summary from Purdue sounds an awful lot like me.... Well, you always did KNOW I was a little different. Now you know why. If you'd like to know just how much, click the link and read away....

A Fantasy on Why My Car Might Have Cost $536.00 to Repair

The Cruiser went to the shop for a day of needed repair, and the bill, when I got it back this afternoon, was about $536.00. The notations on the printed invoice showed that actual parts were only about $45.00 of the total bill. Everything else was labor. This then is my attempt to inject a bit of levity as I try to imagine how a part worth $45 might have needed that much labor to install. (I am, for the record, completely, totally, and utterly, in the wrong freakin' business....)

1) They had to use specialized equipment to shrink the mechanic to one fifth his normal size enabling him then to crawl inside the vehicle and do the repair that way. No regular-sized mechanic can do this repair.

2) Special tools had to be crafted by the gang of fairy elves they keep on staff just for repairs of this nature. These tools can only be used once and are forged of starlight and the tears of maidens during rituals that take hours and hours on nights of the full moon. This was of course included in the huge labor total.

3) Time actually had to be slowed to allow the repair to be done. Since it was the "timing chain" that had to be replaced, a temporal shift was necessary, and although the rest of us weren't aware of it, they worked for four frantic days to ensure the chain that keeps all of time and space from collapsing in on itself was properly in place so the universe could be safe again.

4) Seventeen sanctified holy men fasted and prayed for thirteen days in preparation for this repair, chanting over the tools and purifying them with water drawn from a deep mountain spring untouched by human hands. The sweat and fervor of their dedication ensured that the old timing chain could pass from this world into the next without causing harm to anyone else and also with a sense of peace and accomplishment that will allow it to come back in its next incarnation as something higher and better, perhaps a master cylinder or a fuel pump. This, though, was not a part of the bill. The cost of cooking for the celebratory meal they will feast upon tonight was the labor charge.

5) Timing chains are wily, and they don't easily or gladly relinquish their position. The damage a timing chain can do makes a Bengal tiger look friendly and cuddly in comparison. They have to be hunted, stalked, knife-between-the-teeth, and one wrong move could mean total annihilation for an entire team of crack mechanics no matter how well they have been trained or equipped for the chase. Really, who could put a price on such a dangerous mission?

And...although I could go on, I think I'll stop there. At least I laughed. That's something I suppose. It was an expensive giggle though....

Geekery

I've been on Mental Floss most of the day raising my Geek Quotient. I cannot get enough of that site and magazine. They have the most fascinating stuff, most of it probably not really useful to me in day-to-day life, but all of it terribly, terribly satisfying to me somehow. Every drop of new knowing I have helps me understand the world and my place in it a little better, helps me maintain my sense of wonder in the face of the badness and darkness that crowds in all too often around us.

Put me in any situation where I can learn, and I'm happy. I'm like a nesting raven, picking up the shiny bits of knowledge to tuck into my well-feathered nest. They can be any old thing, truly valuable diamonds or just fancy shards of mercury glass, really. I've even managed to turn some situations that were decidedly not fun (getting fingerprinted so I could be employed as a teacher, having various surgical procedures done) into things I could tolerate by forcing my mind into knowledge-gathering mode. You see, I can deal with just about any-damn-thing if I can get away from the nasty real of it and start looking at it like an exercise in expanding my universe.

I'm looking for a like-minded mate, a geek guy who can enjoy the quirks of this world and find treasure everywhere. I'd love to have somebody like the character Marshall from USA's show In Plain Sight (see the photo at the top, as so wonderfully and gently played by Fred Weller). He's just geekalicious, a person who enjoys knowing everything, has a sense of humor, is strong, honest, and sweet to boot. (Of course, he's fictional. I think we all know "Marshalls" aren't really running around out there free-range. I guess he can be filed under Imaginary in the GEMINI acronym....)

This proposed guy can be from any tribe of geekdom; I don't care if he spends his moments engrossed in Viking literature, doing complicated things with the computer, or watching DW reruns. As long as he loves and longs to know, this is what matters most. This is the heart of all things geek, what every one of us knows is the secret joy of our obsession.

In the meantime, I will continue to read my National Geographic and Mental Floss, enjoy the tweets from the Smithsonian branches and the National Archives (oh, I could have just LIVED in those museums for the rest of my days....), chase electronic rabbits, pursue odd hobbies, and accumulate the unusual objects and knowledge that make my silly little heart go pitter-patter.

A General State of Badness

What do you do when someone you love hurts you? What is the best course of action to take? Do you just suck it up, hold it in, hide it deep, and smile through it? Should you rage and scream, cry and show the bloody wounds in hopes that somebody will sew them up? What's the recommended protocol for survival?

I can see both sides of this issue all too clearly, so as much as I want to cry and throw a temper tantrum, I suppose the current situation is something I brought on somehow myself. I can't say I'm not confused about it still, and I can't say that this horrible logical seeing-of-all-the-sides helps it not to hurt any less.

I also don't know how to let go of my pride and try to fix this. Or even if there is a way now to fix it. There have been hairline fractures for a long time, and apparently, with stress, those fractures have split open wide. I suppose even the strongest stone cracks given enough pressure.

All I do know is that I'm hurt, tired, and oh-so-ready to run away....

The Big Empty

In addition to doing lots of nothing today, I watched a biography of Bette Davis, one of my very favorite actresses from Hollywood's heydays. I learned much that I didn't know before, but as with many of my favorite artists and authors, the thing that struck me most about her life was the singular alone-ness of it.

Certainly, she was married four times, and certainly she had a life filled with men and friends, but it always seemed to me that something kept her separated from finding that true kindred spirit that could have made her deeply satisfied. In the end, even her own daughter was mean-spirited and cruel. I cannot imagine how deeply that cut hurt, especially since she herself gave up so much of her own life to be a daughter who cared for a demanding mother.

Why is it that the ones who are most talented seem to wind up being the ones who are most isolated and alone? That seems so unjust. Is there no happiness for the people who are just that little bit different, who refuse to walk down the most common path? Why do they wind up so often standing in the heart of the Big Empty, smiling for all they're worth, but really miles away from everybody else?

Granted, frequently these authors or actors, these artists of all kinds are trying to reach out into the stars and pull down worlds that this one just isn't quite ready for yet, or they're making destructive decisions, but I still can't help but be so sad when I think over the lives of the ones who have brought me so much happiness and how much sadness they had themselves. Do they have to be isolated just because they aren't quite like everybody else? Unfair, unfair, so very unfair....

Does creativity require heart's blood to make its gaudy blossoms bloom? This isn't the first time I've had this little philosophical conversation with myself. I've read all kinds of quotes about what makes great art, and about half of them seem to agree that it comes from some kind of willing emotional self-immolation, that those who create have to be willing to become masochists of a kind, that people who create are in some way fundamentally broken right from the very start. Maybe this is what causes that isolation and ultimate and lingering sadness.

As I watched the biography today I was seized with the desire to write a letter or take the hand of a very strong lady who would never have needed such compassion from me anyway, and tell her how wonderful I thought she was. Just a note or the quick squeeze of the fingers in a gesture of support, the way you would do with a friend who was having a particularly bad day, looking a little worn or a little lost. I often feel this stupid urge whenever I watch one or read about my favorite people, and sometimes I just wish I could be there to hug whomever it is tightly to me and tell them that they are loved and cherished. It's a silly desire, I know, and dangerously full of poetry and imagination. But because I know just the tiniest bit about standing around in the gray edges of the Big Empty (I haven't the talent to ever get to the heart of it), my heart breaks for them.

But Would Anybody Want to Hear It?

I've written some new stuff, and I really want to show it to somebody and get some feedback. I don't know, however, if it's any good. There's one piece that I think needs to go right straight in "The Drawer." There are a couple of others I have hopes for, though, and I wish I had somebody I could scurry to in the dark of night and slip the pieces of paper under the door, fervently looking left and right, and then run away again. Maybe I could be like Emily and pluck roses from my shrubs, tie poems around them, and hand them out to my friends. Unlike Emily, though, I lack the power to channel the fire and majesty of the universe's soul through my pen. I am writing, but really, does anybody want to hear it?

What Kids Can Do

Therapy this morning. My regular therapist was out because there was a Swine Flu scare at her daycare which caused her to have to go take her preschool daughter to get tested for exposure to the virus.

I keep thinking about how scary it must be to have a little one sometimes. There are diseases like Swine Flu and that virus that is apparently everywhere and can kill kids (one of my friend's children had it and survived, but it was scary), there are the unexpected biological twists like extreme asthma, life-threatening allergies, and seizures (again, I have friends dealing with all these issues), and then there are the everyday things like the broken arms, fevers, runny noses, and the never-ending injuries children do themselves and others. It's terrifying.

Fortunately, and this is just based on observation, it seems that children are remarkably resilient. I know once I saw one literally run face-first into a brick wall, fall down, sit up, and then run off after his friends again a few moments later. (Of course, he was always something of a special case....legendary, really....) I don't know if I'll ever have one of my own, don't know if I'll ever come any closer than this surreptitious watching of my friend's children out of the corners of my eyes, but children will never cease to amaze me with what they can take in stride, what they can recover from. I guess this is one of God's graces to us when we're too small to take good care of ourselves. He gave us the boldness to explore the world so we can learn and a body that can then rebuild itself when those lessons are hard ones.

I hope my therapist's daughter is okay. I don't want to think about any child having to be seriously ill; having been that perennially-sick child hooked up to machines, poked, prodded, and operated on long ago myself, I hate the thought of any child in a hospital room.

So I Suppose I'm an Artist Then....

"Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art."
Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle

Fortune Cookies.

unFortunate - Something common will happen to you in an undetermined amount... Check out this page to custom make your own fortune cookie slips. This one is one of my favorites.