Hints, Allegations, and Things Better Left Unsaid

(With all due props to Collective Soul)

My AP kids asked me point blank today if I was leaving.  It caught me off-guard, to say the least.  Apparently, there is a rumor going around to that effect.  That also caught me off-guard.  I can't imagine anything I do being rumor-worthy, for one.  I am the least conversation-worthy of people, so dull as to make watching paint dry look like a televised sport.

I know how it got started.  I haven't exactly been a cheery camper lately, and I haven't bothered to put on much of a false front.  I have, in fact, been vocal, grumpy, and irritable above and beyond my norm.  After the rather earthshattering revelations of last two or three weeks, though, I felt like somebody had put my soul through a cross-cut shredder, and I needed some time to think, to get myself back in a place where some things made some sense.  I think I might almost be getting there now.

The long and short of it is that I'm not going anywhere, at least not just yet.  My heart is still tied to where I am now.  There have been a couple of powerful reminders of why in the past two weeks in the form of students present and students past.  Maybe I needed that focus shift, too, of why I am there.  Ultimately, they are why I am there and what I'm there for.  The other crap, the stuff beyond my ability to control, needs to matter less to me.  I need to let it slide off me and focus on all that wonder that comes in to my classroom every day.  If I can just do that and keep the real heart of why I do what I do protected and secure, then I can keep doing it with the passion it deserves. 

Liar, Liar

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review 

I hate lies.  I hate being lied to.  I am an easy dupe, constantly credulous, so I know it happens all the time.  I want to believe people, want to think they're all playing above the table, want to believe everyone is trying to do the right thing even when I know they're not.  I need to believe that there are people who want to play those rules, need to believe that people are basically good, or I can't even get out of the bed in the morning, actually.

Therefore, when I learn that I've been lied to for a very long time by somebody I really trusted, the betrayal I feel is profound.

I can understand why it happened.  The situation, I'm sure, felt like one that demanded it at the time.  However, who we are when nobody is looking is who we really are, right?  We all struggle with darkness.  We all have secret sins, flaws we hope nobody ever sees, pieces of ugliness that we fight every day, but embracing them, excusing them with situational ethics is not a way to make ourselves or any situation we find ourselves in better.  We refine nothing, solve nothing, bring forth no gold from the dross when we say, "I will do this wrong this time, in this crisis and call it good." All we do is stave off disaster until later, allow the wound to fester untended.

What are the results of this latest revelation for me?  Another person I can't quite look in the eye.  Another huge mess somebody is going to have to clean up.  Another nail in the coffin of the whole situation.  Another scar I have to carry internally.  Most crucially, I've been thinking lately, another reason I should just force myself not to trust anyone. 

Is this a way to live, though?  Do I need to close myself off because of the unfaithfulness of others?  Should I stop believing in the truth because others have?  Part of me very much wants to protect myself, become cynical, trust no one, but this is no way to go through life, is it?  At the same time, I don't think I can be the same person I was.  I don't think I should be.  It is equally unwise to learn nothing from a situation that has brought pain.

Maybe the best course of action is to follow Shakespeare's quote, "Love all, trust a few, do harm to none."  Maybe if I can keep this axiom in my mind, I can find a middle road between a hard shell that keeps everyone out and a heart so credulous that everyone can wipe their feet on it and walk away laughing.

Tired

What do you do when somebody won't lift a hand to save themselves?  When they're perfectly content to go down for the third time, slip under the surface and disappear, maybe forever?  How many times do you swim out, try to grab them, drag them to the shore when they fight you, or worse still, when they laugh and sing, party and dance as the ship goes down?

My heart, my very soul hurt.  I don't know what to do anymore.  Everything I do feels useless.  I'm surrounded by pockets of indifference, gallows humor, crudeness, and outright cruelty in an emergency of epic proportions.  I feel like I'm trapped in this old, old nightmare I used to have where I was inside a burning building full of people who I was trying to alert to the danger but none of whom would listen.... 

As always, it's not every single thing in my day to day that is causing this.  I need to focus on those bright pockets, those shining stars, but I am so distressed over the other, the lost ones, right now, that I can't see anything else.  I'm so tired.  Just tired, tired, tired.  I wish this was just over for awhile.

Sweet Shakespeare

I got such a surprise yesterday.  My AP students, stealthy little creatures that they are, had noticed me looking at busts of Shakespeare about a month ago and had gotten me one as a "happy."  I was caught completely off-guard. I've been wanting one of these for a very long time, but all of them, even the very small ones, have been impossible on my budget.  This one is lovely. I had them all take a fine-tip Sharpie and sign the bottom so I will have a permanent reminder of just who those sweet people are who gave it to me. Every time I look at it, I will be able to think of that good day and this good year and smile.

Oh, So, SO True.....

CNN is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power.
  - Arthur C. Clarke

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

It seems I start so many reviews out this way....

I've had this book on my "to read" shelf for a long time now, and I really, really wish I'd gotten to it sooner.  I can see why it got the Pulitzer.  I devoured it in two long Saturdays of reading, last and this, and it turned out to be one of those books that I regret being over. 

I loved the mix of Dominican history, something I first got curious about through Julia Alvarez, and the "Genres," stuff I've been reading for years.  The storylines of the different members of the Cabral family were so beautifully told.  I loved the narrative voice and its endless footnote digressions.  I found myself laughing hysterically and learning stuff, too.  Can you ask for more than that, really?

The book just moved me.  I am still turning bits of it over in my mind, and in time, I will definitely reread it.  Oscar himself reminds me of people I know, famous characters from other pieces of literature, and the whole thing is a bit like a horrifying fairy tale set in a place not imagined by too real to have been dreamed up.  I want to put it on my reading list for my course, but because of the strength of the content, I may have to forego that.  I will recommend it here, though.  It is one of the five best books I've read this year, hands down.  If you're interested, you can click the image of it above and go right to its listing on Amazon.

Restoration of Balance

Today was my students' AP test (come on, College Board....hit my blog.  I dare you.  Hit my blog.  I know you're going to.  You do every single year.  I'm not saying a fee-freakin thing about the exam except "it was".), and I got up early, went and set up their "snack table" for the break, and took my jittery nerves on about my day.  I had done all I could for them: providing intensive review, even adding two afterschool sessions that I've never offered before to help prep them,  giving what I hope was solid instruction all year long, of course, and although I really, really wish we'd had that month we wound up missing because of school's late start, etc., etc., I felt fairly peaceful about it. They were so motivated and have worked so hard.  All I can do now is wait for the scores.  I can't wait until I get to see what the prompts were like this year. The waiting period is just cruel.

Test day for me is always the lifting of a huge burden.  This year because of all the added stress of everything else that's been going on, I don't think this has ever been more true.  I  used the extra class periods to get some serious catching-up done on grading and paperwork, so I had even more reason to feel good when I left the building today.  If I can get two or three more good work days in, I think I can get everything completely caught up. 

I recently finished up another big project I had hanging over me, too, and I got some news that resolved an issue that was causing me stress in another area, too, so things are slowly starting to even out.  There is still one big shoe waiting to drop, though.  I may know more about it after tomorrow.  I guess, though, if I can get my stressors down to one or two from four or five, I will be at such ridiculous leisure that I will just count myself lucky and complain to no one.

The RSC Hamlet

As a person who loves and teaches Hamlet, I have seen more than my fair share of versions of Hamlet.  Prior to yesterday, I had three of them in my personal DVD collection: Olivier's, Zeferelli's, and Branaugh's.  There are things I like about all of them, strengths and weaknesses of them.  I use different versions to teach different scenes.

Yesterday, I got a long-awaited treat in a small brown box from Amazon, the new Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet starring David Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart as Claudius.  It may just be the best version of the play I have ever seen all in all. 

I had been hearing of this production for about two years.  David Tennant, of course, has been playing Dr. Who for the last four years, and it was during his tenure as the Doctor that he started performing Hamlet with the RSC.  Patrick Stewart has been doing things with the RSC forever, I suppose, but putting the two of these actors into this production must have been a marketing coup beyond all coups for somebody.  I mean, how many people probably bought tickets because they wanted to see the Doctor face off against Jean Luc Picard? 

I'm not trying to denigrate either actor, believe me.  They are both superb.  I don't think I have ever seen Hamlet done so well.  The "mad" act is completely zany, great fun to watch, and as I came to appreciate with Tennant in his role as the Doctor, the scenes of emotional grief were capable of wringing the soul without being overacted.  Tennant is capable of expressing pain and suffering with expressions, movements of the eye.  It's restrained and elegant. 

Of course, what can I say about Patrick Stewart?  Just his voice makes him a better Claudius than all the rest, but that's the least of what makes him good in this.  His performance, too, is restrained.  The inherent cleverness and plotty complexity of the character is perfectly portrayed here as I've never once seen it before.  Since Stewart is playing the Ghost and Claudius, Gertrude's quick remarriage makes more sense, too, and his portrayal of Claudius is such that you actually find yourself liking him...until you look under the surface and know him....  I understand why he got the Olivier Award for this.

From the set to the portrayal of Gertrude, from the modernization of the costumes (Hamlet delivers "To Be or Not to Be" in jeans and barefooted) to the fact that dumb show is done by risque clowns, it's just a brand new beast.  This performance helped me look at this play that I love and know so well in new ways.  I love it.  If you like Hamlet at all, you should definitely check it out for yourself.  You can click the photo at the top and get it right from Amazon if you like.

(Un) Comfortably Numb

The migraine hit during second period as I was doing my usual frantic dance to finish my last full class day of preparations for this year's AP test.  I should have known it was coming.  One of my students called me over to look at something on the sheet they were working on, and although I can usually read stuff upside down, the symbols on the page made no sense.  They could have been Cyrillic for all the meaning I could wring from them.  I managed to force focus back into place, but a few minutes together, the pain struck, and it felt like someone was literally stabbing me through the inner corner of my right eye with an ice pick.  I could feel the little sliver of pain all the way through my brain, sharp, brutal.  Right behind it came the light sensitivity and the radiating broader pain.

So I did what I had to, I took a Maxalt.  Mercifully, I got to it early enough to stop the chain reaction and slow down the worst of the pain that would linger.  The rest of the day, I was just wrapped up in a horrible floating disconnected haze, wanting nothing more than to lay my head on my desk and sleep.

I had to go to Wal-Mart after school because I was out of every single thing in my house, and I found myself gravitating toward brightly-colored objects like an infant.  I hope I bought what I needed.  I may wake up tomorrow and find I brought home a whole carload of Fisher-Price toys....

On the drive home, the radio station I listen to most played "Comfortably Numb," and even though I am not, by and large, a huge Pink Floyd fan (I'm almost positive that this is because of "Another Brick in the Wall"), that song has always been one that I've loved.  Today, I actually lived it.  I spent my whole day in that freaking horrible numbness where my pain was separated from myself, where my whole self has been separated from me.  Of course, I do recognize their means of getting to this state was somewhat...less legal...than mine and that perhaps that numbness was apparently somehow appealing, but other than these minor differences, so many of the lyrics applied. 

Of course, too, this might just be the Maxalt talking....  Sigh.  I think I need a nap.

Sweet Jesus, If I Could Just Write Like This.....

9.
by E. E. Cummings
there are so many tictoc clocks everywhere telling people what toctic time it is for tictic instance five toc minutes toc past six tic Spring is not regulated and does not get out of order nor do its hands a little jerking move over numbers slowly we do not wind it up it has no weights springs wheels inside of its slender self no indeed dear nothing of the kind. (So,when kiss Spring comes we'll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss lips because tic clocks toc don't make a toctic difference to kisskiss you and to kiss me)

Another Rainy Saturday

Storm clouds are rolling around us, and the house is creaking.  My windchimes outside have been clattering all morning. The dogs won't go outside except when I sort of shove them out the door, and then they run into the yard, run back, and stare into the porch door looking infinitely betrayed.  It's a good day to be inside.

I have gotten a lot done today on my project.  I have a little more to go, and I'll be done with it.  That feels so good.  With everything else basically going to hell in the proverbial handcart, it's nice for something to be resolving itself in a timely fashion.  I might push on through this afternoon or tonight and get it completely done, but it will be finished tomorrow in any case.  I will be able to take my mental fountain pen and cross it firmly off my list.  (Do other people have mental fountain pens?  I'll worry about that later...)

I spent a good portion of the morning reading, and I'm almost done with The Devil's Punchbowl.  It has, like the last book by Iles I tried to read, disturbed me more than entertained me.  I loved probably the first five books by him I read, but these last two have both attracted and repelled me.  I think the problems I'm having with this one are because it has so much to do with dogfighting.  I keep having to put the book down and grab Roux, hold her and pat her and be grateful that she wasn't one of those.  I loathe dogfighters.  I don't think there's a place in hell hot enough for them or anything that can be done here on earth that's too strong a punishment, really.  Maybe that's what Iles is trying to show.  I don't know.  It's hard to read, anyway.

I hope we don't get the really bad weather today.  Apparently, it's out there, ripping things to pieces again this weekend.  It seems this spring is going to be the year of the storm.  I find that somehow almost too Natural Law appropriate for words, but you really can't go by me, can you?  I am a literature freak, and we see signs and wonders under every rock and tree, a little like the shamans and druids of old, I suppose....

Take It Easy

I'm going to take it easy this weekend.  I have something I have to finish work-wise, but other than that, I am officially declaring this weekend hand-off-me time.  Since my answering machine is out of commission anyway, this shouldn't be all that hard to pull off.  I am going to finish the Greg Iles I'm working on now (once I get the work done, that is), get Jim Butcher's new one on my Kindle and read it, and generally indulge myself in music and print.  Tomorrow night will be a new episode of Dr. Who, and I am actually enjoying the new series quite a bit more than I expected, so that will be a nice treat, too.  If the promised bad weather doesn't come in, I may tag one of my friends and see if she wants to go get some Japanese food.  If not, I may go myself and be the chick with the iPod and book in the corner eating udon or donburi.  In fact, the idea of being totally anonymous feels mightily appealing.  Whatever I decide to do, the break in my usual routine should feel good, I think.  It will be the most important thing, just trying to get my mind in a new place.  If I can do that, I think I can hold up for what's to come.

Astute Observation on the Mother Tongue

The English language was carefully, carefully cobbled together by three blind dudes and a German dictionary.

~ Dave Kellett, Sheldon, 02-01-09

Still Tumbling About in the Polisher

Here's one of the pieces I'm still working on.  I wanted to put one of them up.  I still don't have a firm title for it since it's changing shapes with each revision, but right now, I'm calling it Persistence.

You surround me
vast, endless
sea, desert, sky
a universe of you
everywhere

A flood of prepositions
sweeping me before you
enfolding me gently or rough
consuming me inside

Your blue eyes peer at me
with gentle and impersonal question
over the rim of every chipped coffee cup
every stranger behind a paperback
is you
gold and blue

Into my ears
subtle as Claudius' poison
slides your music
a rock and roll ventriloquism
still pulling the strings
after you took your voice away

Unkind of you
to have left behind
so many ghosts
when you went away
You should have taken it all
cleared up these shades
of or and azure
that cling like wind-borne incense
fragrance of something
sacred, clean, wild, precise
of the shoulder I used
to lay my head on
in the stillness of the long
moonless night

Instead there's the endless shock
again, again, again
of seeing the monuments
you left behind
carved into the corridors of my soul
like some latter-day pharoah
yearning for immortality

New Poems

I've written two new poems lately, and I'm quietly pleased with them.  They are still in the "rock tumbler" phase of adjustments little and large, but the core is solidified, the idea is there, the key phrases are clicking against each other and starting to look like poetry.  It feels so very good to write again.  I hate it when my inner voice is mute.  I walk around with pieces of things jangling around in my head, bits of colored glass and old buttons, oddments I've collected, and I sort through them with my mental fingertips, but during those times, no pattern forms.  Lately, though, everything has been treasure.  I'm grateful. I needed it.

A Million Good Things

This time of the year, I tend to get stressed, worn, and tired.  My focus tends to narrow down to the negative.  God knows there's enough negative to go around right now without looking very hard.  That, too, makes it hard to raise my head, unfold my wings.  I forget that there are a million good things around me.  I have to force myself to remember that there are tulip poplars in the world, beautiful with their yellow and orange blossoms.  I need to loop my sari silk scarf around my neck and study the vivid colors.  I should enjoy the simple pleasure of using my fountain pens when I have to do the everyday tasks of schoolwork paper-pushing.  I need to sing louder with the radio on the way to school and in the privacy of my classroom after the day is done.  If I can hold on to the good things, maybe I can offset some of the ridiculous detritus I can't clear away despite all my best efforts to the contrary.

Why My iPhone Rocks

My DSL has been out all weekend.  Something happened in the wee small hours of Saturday morning, and my phoneline got fried.  I, being the consumate electronic addict that I am, was panic-stricken at the idea of a whole weekend with no email or internet.  Worse still, I use email and web to do the bulletin  for my church. 

Enter the iPhone. 

Although I had to charge it in the middle of Saturday, it saved the weekend.  I could still get email.  I was able to pull stuff off the web for the bulletin.  I went and looked at a punch bowl for my mom on Ebay since she does not "go there."  I kept up with people on FaceBook during the insane weather.  It was a very, very good thing.

Now, my BlackBerry was very good to me for a long time, but I'm here to tell you right now that I could not have done everything that I did this weekend with it.  Before this weekend, I was fond of my trusty little "electronic device," but afterward, I just want to give it a hug and make it a little cushy bed all of its own. 

Signs and Omens

I deal with literature too much.

Pale Rider just came on, and of course, my brain just traced the path of allusions to Revelations, webbed it across Pratchett and Gaiman and Anthony, and then tied it to my own current situation.  Is this a good thing or a bad thing?  Most of the time I enjoy this extra layer that almost everything has laid over the top of it.  Sometimes it's a little like a game of Six Degrees of Separation.  Right now, though, I'm just tired, and the bits and pieces that are rubbing together are like the raw edges of broken bones.

I have nightmares when I sleep.  It doesn't matter what I watch or read before bedtime; I wake up in the night dreaming of serial killers, of monsters (and not the kind I empathize with), of loss that makes me cry. 

I am so forgetful that I can't get from one room to another without losing what I went there for.  It's distressing and horrible, like my mind is a slate being continually washed clean by fast-flowing water.  It's like being pre-migraine all the time.  Maybe that's what's really happening, but I'm not actually on-setting with pain, halo, or anything other than very delayed processing, so I can't tell.

I'm going to have to take a day soon.  As soon as I can get everybody through testing, I am going to take one of my many, many personal days and just go somewhere else.  Maybe Jackson, maybe just the Old Place.  It won't really matter.  Maybe if I spend a day somewhere other, maybe the web of connections that ties everything together won't be such a leaden burden afterward. 

Good to See

A local university has started to take unused buildings downtown and renovate them, use them as arts centers, parts of its campus.  I think that's great.  Nobody else seems to be doing anything with these great old buildings except buying them up and letting them fall in or tearing them down.  It makes me happy that these old department stores which were once the heart of the city will again have life in them, maybe give life back to our town.  I'm tired of deadness and decay.  It will be great to see something grow instead of fall apart.

The Price of Knowledge

To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody. ~ Quentin Crisp

Some Things Are Just Right

i carry your heart eecummings inscription by pocketfullofpoesy

I don't usually do this.  I'm not the type to browse through bridal magazines, and God knows I avoid the latest rash of bride reality shows like the plague that they are.  I've never done the ultra-girly thing of picking out my dress, my colors, or planning my reception.  It's always seemed so unreal, so impossible, to me that there was no reason to do it.  The only wedding idea that I've really had involved a Las Vegas Elvis....

That being said, if I ever do find a crazy sucker wonderful man and we wind up getting married, I have at least found what I'd like my ring to look like.  This is e.e. cummings, of course.  How could it not be, really?  Now if I can just find a man who knows who that is.....

When the World Falls Apart

(Vague for a reason)

Everything is coming unglued.  All the pillars of stability are falling in or being ripped away, and I don't know, anymore, what to think.   I'm a person who can adapt to a great many variables when I know they're coming, in a situation like travel or a project or something that demands it.  In the other areas of my life, though, I need most things to be what they're supposed to be, need a minimum of chaos.  Surprises are okay, I don't mind being flexible, but there comes a certain point past which all the flexibility becomes so much flailing in water that's too deep to survive.  I can only build when there's a firm foundation.  Is there?  Will there ever be again?  I am soul-sick with these questions. 

A New Doctor

"Beans are evil.  Bad, bad beans."  The Eleventh Doctor

I am watching the Dr. Who premiere again on its replay.  Matt Smith is the Eleven, and I'm getting used to him.  Some of this episode is hilarious.  The scene at the beginning where he's trying to find the food he craves is classic.  By the time he hurled that saucer of bread and butter out the door, I was laughing so hard I had teared up. 

I also think I like Amelia Pond.  I didn't expect to since they made her look about six in all the previews.  She's feisty, but she doesn't appear to be another Rose Tyler, who, I know it's heresy to some to say, I actually got very tired of very fast.  I love the scene where the child Amy packs all her stuff in a box and then goes to sit in the garden.  I also love the fact that she's running away with her "imaginary friend."  The set-up this time is good, much better thought-out to me than usual, it seems.

I won't know for sure how Eleven is going to stack up for a few more episodes yet.  If they all live up to or build on this first one, I think he's going to be a worthy successor to the tradition. 

Julia's Gone

Designing Women was on during much of my junior high and high school years.  It passed into syndication, and I watched re-runs for years afterwards until it disappeared into those late night, hard-to-find slots on Nick at Nite, Lifetime, and WE.  The whole original cast worked well together and was necessary for the show to be a success as is so often the case with ensembles, but the character I admired the most was Julia Sugarbaker. 

I think we all found something of an inspiration in Julia.  She had it all together.  She was what real Southern girls with brains want to grow up to be.  Even when everything was falling down around her, she maintained dignity and poise, kept her kindness, and above all, dealt with situations with her formidable intellect.

And that intellect was a mighty weapon.  She was erudite, a master of the art of linguistic skewer.  I loved her for that most of all.  She, like my own mother, was a woman who never needed to resort to profanities to reduce someone to a tiny little pile of ashes.  The famous "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" speech remains one of my favorite examples of Julia in her rhetorical prime.

She also had a strong sense of what she would and would not allow, what was and was not going to happen in her life, in her world, and to herself.  Her moral code was unbending.  She knew what she believed, and she stood up for it fiercely, with the same grace and determination of the heroines of the movies I love from the 30s and 40s. 

She was never so rigid, though, that she couldn't laugh at herself and the absurdities of the world in which she found herself.  Humor, so much a part of the show, was also a part of her own personality.  Julia taught us not to take everything, including ourselves, quite so seriously. 

Dixie Carter, the classy lady who gave life to Julia Sugarbaker, passed away today.  I think that much of the charm and richness of Julia came straight from the graciousness of Dixie.  I wanted to take just this one little moment to honor the character who, with her velvet glove and iron fist attitude, served as an inspiration for so many of us.  I said earlier that we all wanted to be Julia when we grew up; I guess we all still do.

What I Need

I'm in a reckless, sad, and tired mood tonight, and I need.  I need. 

I need a fast strong responsive car that I can get in, crank up, and feel the power of it hum through my fingertips and the bottoms of my feet as it takes me away.  Because I also need to be away, to New Orleans, to the coast, to Las Vegas, to Seattle, to somebody's backyard under a spreading oak tree, anywhere that isn't here.  I need to see something different, scenery that doesn't bruise my eyes when I look at it, that doesn't wear on my soul like fine-grain sandpaper because of what it makes me think of, what it makes me feel. 

I need an adventure, something wild and unplanned, something wonderful and unexpected, a gift falling out of the sky.  Not one of those things that costs a lot of money, but one of those things that takes me out of this space I get trapped in all too often between my own ears and away from the problems I cannot resolve, the pains I cannot ease.  I need something to remind me of the sheer stupid wonder and wonderfulness of this world.

I need somebody.  I need a person who can take me when I'm at my worst because lately, that seems to be all that's left rattling around the bottom of the barrel.  I need a person who can help me remember what I am when I'm not tapped completely out, who will just hold on to me when I'm wild and whirling until it all of it is done.  I need a fellow adventurer and a person who's not afraid to stand toe-to-toe with me when I'm a stubborn wench. It seems too much to ask for in any person, all of that.

Night falls; the sun dies.  The air is chilly and damp with it.  Weariness closes around me like another layer of cold dew, internal, clinging.  I'm wishing for magic tonight, wishing for a knock at the door that only happens in fairy tales and Greek myths.  Those days were never really "those days," though, and I think I am going to have to turn my mind to being content somehow instead.

Claws

I went to a meeting recently expecting an informative presentation of matters of interest.  What I got instead was a chance to hear my school get slammed through the floor for an hour and fifteen minutes. I've just about had enough.

It's easy to take shots at someone when they're down.  It's easy to see some person with a problem you don't personally struggle with, have maybe never struggled with, and point your finger, smirk to yourself, whisper catty little comments behind your hand.  What's not easy, what is in fact bone-crushingly hard at times, is to get off your backside, out of your comfort zone, and turn that pointing finger into a helping hand. 

It's the old Good Samaritan parable all over again.  This one is too busy, this one won't dirty holy hands, this one is happy to see the downfall as it happens because of some old personal grudge long-held and carefully cherished.  Who is going to be the one who stops even if their clothes get a little muddy or bloody?  Who is going to be willing to leave the country club bar and do instead? Who is going to be the one to let old petty conflicts pass and look at the greater good in the present?

I'm tired.  Mortally so.  I love my school.  I love my kids.  I believe in both fervently.  Am I blind to the fact that there are problems?  Absolutely not.  I'll tell you this for nothing, though.  I'm just about done with polite smiles and socially-gracious responses to those who seem to glory in our struggles and try to push us face-down in the mud.  The claws are going to come out.  I just can't manufacture it much longer.

Wicked

I saw Wicked last night. My friends and I were lucky enough to get some tickets to the New Orleans performance with the touring roadshow.  I haven't been to a Broadway show since I left IU, so it was nice to be back in a theater to see a big production.  I really miss that about IU.

I never expected to get to see this one.  I  had read the book a long time ago, and I remember being powerfully moved by it.  I need to go back and reread it because I apparently had forgotten a lot of it, but the musical was amazing. 

The basic storyline was the same.  Elphaba was the scapegoat for everyone else's issues because she was different.  It's easy to blame the one who doesn't quite conform, who doesn't play by the rules.  The performers in the roles of Elphaba and Glinda were perfect.  Elphaba, as she grew and bloomed, was powerful.  Glinda was both poignant and hillarious as she fluttered around the stage and became something more than "blonde." 

The songs were grand, and I loved the spectacle of it. What broke my heart, though, was the song "I'm Not that Girl."  Oh, it made tears well up in my eyes.  There were so many great songs in it, but I felt that one like a knife strike directly.  I may not be green, but the feeling reflected is all too familiar.

I'm going to get the soundtrack, and I'm going to reread the book.  I guess I'm off on another kick.  That's okay.  There are worse kicks to be on, I suppose.   If you'd like to read it, too, here's a link from Amazon to it:  Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Harper Fiction)

Cafe du Monde

I finally got to go to Cafe du Monde.  Last trip to New Orleans, we were too pressed for time for me to go, and I really regretted not being able to do it. It was the one thing my dad told me that I MUST do while I was there. 

Getting there turned into a bit of an adventure since there was some kind of fun run going on today.  We managed to park and walk in, but we had to hike down some railroad tracks and approach it from the rear.  There was a small pack of hungry tourists with us who were all headed for the restaurant.  It was sort of amusing to see all those people headed so single-mindedly toward beignets. 

They were wonderful, and well-worth the walk.  I love pastry anyway, so it was a shoe-in that I'd love these.  I need to get a recipe and see if I can make them here at home.  I suspect, however, that I will just need to wait until I can get back down to New Orleans again and have them under than green and white awning. 

Impressionism by God

Driving home today, I was full of beignet and drowsy in the sunshine.  The pollen was gilding the air with a hazy of surreality.   Across the eastbound lanes of the interstate floated a yellow swallowtail, the first one I've seen this year.  Even the Mississippi roadsides were exquisite works of art.

I've never seen the redbuds bloom like they're doing this year.  Splashes of amethyst and the rarer rusty-red break up the multitudinous shades of green.  Bursts of white from the newly-opened dogwoods shine like left-over patches of the snow we had earlier, but far more delicate and more welcome.  Twining through it all like an ornament or a crown is the gold of confederate jasmine. 

Even a long road trip can be made a pleasure with the right scenery.  As much as I like Monet and Pissarro, I don't think either of them could have produced anything more lovely or restoring to the soul that the landscape I passed through today.  Of course, I am no art critic; I only know what stirs my own heart. 

Random Attack of Memory

I was at the kitchen sink this morning getting ready to load dishes into an newly-empty dishwasher when a phrase a friend of mine from college used to say came back to me for some reason.  I haven't thought about him in a very long time, but that phrase was like a spade turning over winter soil for spring planting.  More and more images of him kept coming, more and more of the time we spent together, the comfortable and the uncomfortable, too.

I remembered Snickers ice cream hysteria, a custom-cut wax seal, a Martin guitar, and endless conversations, many of which we managed not to argue in at all.  I remembered a stained glass studio, a high-tech lab, at least four different apartments, restaurants of various quality, some of which no longer exist, some of which will probably be in Starkville after I'm dead and gone, and the smell of his shampoo.  I remembered the ubiquitous brown leather sandals, a trip to the coast that was almost a disaster, long hugs, juvenile fights with plastic swords, and getting so mad at him I couldn't talk.  I remembered that he was always the one who believed in my writing and that without him, I never would have found the courage to push for my first trip out of the country, Costa Rica.

It's strange the things that stick, the things that stay, the shards and pieces that remain after everything else is over.  I spent time with other friends tonight, old friends and new, good friends all, and we had a great time.  Now, though, for some reason, in this still quiet of the night, the fingers of my memory are stirring the fragments of the past around looking at that which is lost and gone.  I don't know what augury it hopes to accomplish with this exercise.  I just hope that it puts all the bits neatly and carefully away when it's done.  Some of the edges are still sharp, after all.

Honey, If I Just Passed Your Mustang in My PT Cruiser, You're Doing Something Wrong

So I'm coming home from town today, and suddenly, there is a pair of Mustangs hovering around and about me.  I didn't think much about them.  Usually, they zip away quickly.  This pair, though, sped up and slowed down in that annoying fashion meaning they were being driven by people who either a) don't understand the concept of cruise control or b) were too young to have been entrusted with a car like that, especially on a Friday night. 

One would blow past me, and then suddenly I'd see brake lights.  What the heck?  Short of a wreck or other road emergency, who does that on the interstate?  Repeatedly?  It wasn't like they looked down, saw they were going 110 and thought, "Whoa...I need to slow it down...."

I bumped my cruise up a bit and passed one (something a four-cylinder car should never have been able to do, a profound violation of the universe) and got away from them for awhile.  Eventually, whatever malfunction they were having resolved itself, and they streamed by again and disappeared.

Electronic Holiday

Lately, I haven't felt much like being on the computer.  I don't know if it's the Spring in the air or what, but I haven't wanted to be on FaceBook or blog here, either.  I've been journaling in my Florentine prize, but for some reason, as I've looked at this laptop, it has felt somehow like a chore to come to it and do the things that I usually enjoy.  I guess periodically everything gets old.  It's just a phase and I'll cycle through it, undoubtedly. 

There are, of course, things that I have found that I can say in the pages of my journal that I cannot say here.  Maybe the freedom of that is a little enchanting right now, too.  I can do both.  Really, it's two different kinds of expression, one that I only do for myself, and one that I am conscious of a reader peering over my shoulder while every word falls from my fingertips.

Some of my other electronic endeavors are on a more permanent hold.  I'll get back to them soon.  I just need a little holiday from it all.  It will feel fresh again when I return.

Art for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store

Art for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store

For 99 cents, you can't beat this app with a stick. It's wonderful. I found so many of the works I saw when I was in Italy and favorites I know from other places in this app. You can take the images and turn them into wallpaper, too, and since I change my wallpaper frighteningly often, this is a feature I am really fond of. This one, along with iBird Explorer South and Nightstand, is one of the few paid apps I feel was totally worth it.

Running Down a Dream

(with apologies to Tom Petty)

I dream now, and I dream of the twisting streets of Italy.  I think I'm dreaming of Florence, but it's all blending together with Rome in a pastiche.  One moment, I am standing and looking up at the multicolored sky in the middle of the piazza in front of the Spanish Steps, the sound of flowing water the only sensation.  Then, I am beneath a magnificent dome arching high above me like the cupped hand of God protecting me from all harm.  The next, in the way of dreams, the scene flickers, and I'm on the Ponte Vecchio, scaffolding gone, staring out at a night scene of stars on water, something I never saw save in the eye of my imagination.

Wherever this dreamland my mind is conjuring happens to be, it is not a modern place.  There are no cars, no hoardes of tourists.  The only light, when there is any, is that golden light that bathes the world of dreams, soft, surreal, and seemingly coming from everywhere.  It somehow suits this landscape perfectly, the colors, the stone buildings, the marble fountains. 

Maybe they were made for dreams and dreamers, Rome and Florence.  Maybe that's why poets and artists are born there, move there, sing of them, have built them lovely, lovely in their ancient splendor.  There is something about them them calls out to the soul that loves beauty, even from five thousand miles away, and my helpless dreamer's heart can't help but yearn.

Florentine Men

I think I found the place I need to go to find smart men. I went through the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, and it was only then that I realized how many geniuses came from that one city. Galileo, da Vinci, Machiavelli, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Dante,Vespucci, Fermi, Marconi...the list goes on and on through the ages. How is it possible for that one place to produce so very many geniuses in such diverse fields?

I might also add that the Florentine guys (not the stone ones above) I saw were very easy on the eyes. This does not hurt. Maybe I've just been on the wrong continent all this time. Hmm.....

The Colosseum

So many things a person waits for in life just turn out to be disappointments. The amount of anticipation and gift wrapping our imaginations carefully layer on top of the things we long to do or see frequently somehow diminishes the experience itself. When we reach that place or have a chance to do the thing we've always said we want to do, how can it live up to all those long-held dreams?

I have wanted to see the Colosseum for a long time. It has, in fact, been on my "list" for some time. On my recent trip to Rome, I had a chance to take a tour of it. Despite my many hours thinking of it and all the times it has shown up in film and drawings, it was more impressive that I ever could have imagined.

Just stepping into the cool shadows under the main seats and running my fingertips across the support columns made my breath catch. How many hands over the centuries have trailed fingertips there? What noble and awful things have resonated through those stones, those bricks, and that mortar?

Emerging into the sun again, I saw the vast bowl of the stadium itself open before me. Words fail. I tried to capture it with photographs, but there is no angle perfect enough, no lens ground well enough to show the heart-elevating majesty of the engineering, the beauty of brick and marble made perfect and true even after the ravages of the centuries. Right behind that emotion, though, comes the reminder of what it was built for, and a whole new set of feelings sweeps in. The eye is drawn irresistibly to the great metal cross that crowns the place where the jaded and self-proclaimed divine emperors of Rome once sat to watch the deadly entertainments that sated the lusts of their people, a fitting place for it, like a crucifix used to slay a monster, perhaps.

I clicked off photos from every angle, even a rare one of me standing in front of it. I want to remember always that I was there. For me, the Colosseum is both the best and the worst that we are capable of being. I have seen it with my own eyes now, laid my fingers on its bare and poignant bones, and I think that the sheer power of the place, both the great and the terrible, will always be a part of me.

Dante

I saw Dante's tomb while I was in Florence. He was everywhere there, one of the favored sons. I found this, of course, highly ironic, since they cast him out during his lifetime for being of the wrong political persuasion. Our guide, the lovely Marco, pointed out the fact when we passed the museum made of his "house." They tore it down when they exiled Dante. Later, after they recognized the grandeur of his writing, in a fit of guilt, they rebuilt a replica on the site. Irony abounds. A bust of him made from his death mask adorns a niche on the outside. I wonder if Dante himself would have been able to make that elegant shrug and say with his modern-day son, "Sometimes it happens" as he stood in that cobbled square. I hope so.

Inside a Migraine

I am actively migraining right now, and I'm going to try to write about it.  This may not make much sense.  This attack started this morning, and I finally broke down and took a Maxalt about fourth period.  It put up the necessary glass-block wall, and I observed the world from an uncomfortable distance the rest of the day, constantly pressing through to try to interact with people, feeling that horrible delay with everything as I tried to make my brain function. 

Once 7th period was gone, I left the lights off.  It was bliss.  Light is my enemy. I left the room dark and prayed for silence and stillness, leaving my stereo off and hoping not to have to talk to anyone too much.  I graded papers until it got too dark to see, and then I ventured back out into the world of overhead illumination. 

Immediate tension and pain, like a vise tightening inside my skull.  I wanted to cry.  I think I can feel the nerves inside my eyes leading into my brain.  I stumbled out to my car and started the drive home.  Every time the horrible headlights of another car struck my windshield, every time I drove underneath a streetlight, I yelled and wished for a dark hole I could pull in on top of myself.  Those hellish blue headlights were like someone literally stabbing me through the eye.  Halos like some kind of special effects from a video surrounded every light source.  They would have been beautiful had there not been that pain and dissociation from everything that accompanied them.

When I got home, the pain had dulled down to a softly pulsing drone.  I microwaved the only food that didn't sound like something that would make me throw up, french toast sticks, and had supper.  Everything was funny for some reason, funny and far away.  There is still a distance I can't seem to cross, a divide that separates me from my pets, my house, everything I know I need to be doing right now. 

I'm going to go to bed now.  I hope that sleep will reset my fried circuits.  Otherwise, tomorrow, Tuesday, always a crap day, is going to be a real monster.

A Moment of Clarity

It took seeing them bring her out on a stretcher to make me realize the depths of my own absurdity.  There she was, frail and weak, and it struck me suddenly how tenaciously I'd clung to all those old grudges that ultimately mean nothing in the light of all the good intentions piled up on the other side of the scale.  As they loaded her gently into the back of the Metro amubulance in the darkness of the cold night, I let go of those old frustrations and made my peace with that piece of my past.

I can't count the Sundays we'd been herded into that classroom and told dubious things about Jesus.  As my own understanding of the Bible grew, so, too, did my personal frustration level.  By the time I was a senior, I had stopped going to Sunday School at all.  I would not be disrespectful, and since that was the year my parents told me that I didn't have to go anymore, I took myself out of a situation that caused me an endless form of tearing inside.

Over the years, friction continued to be there.  The basic conflict just never went away.  I kept it there like a piece of sandpaper, rubbing my thumb across it, constantly feeling that grit abraiding me instead of somehow doing what even that simplest of bivalves is capable of, wrapping it in something smooth and creating something of beauty of it.

Why did I do that?  I would have and have done that for most other people I know, even those with far fewer redeemed qualities than she.  I have consciously forced my mind to the positive, sought that which would enable me to see the gold among the pebbles, laughed at myself for my own grumpiness.  Here, though, for years, I have been unwilling to see her as a person and value her accordingly, and for that I am deeply and most humbly sorry.  She has always been only the monster of those long-ago Sundays, and she didn't deserve that blindness, that disdain from me.  Nobody does from anyone. 

It's horrible but necessary to be shown that you aren't what you think you are from time to time, to have that moment when your own blinders about yourself and others are painfully ripped away to force you to look honestly at yourself and your own behaviors.  I will take what I learned in those lightning flashes of the emergency vehicles strobes and try to remedy these faults.  I just wish the revelation had come earlier.

Yeah, So....SCORE....

I went to the Hell of Retail today and did my preshopping for Rome today.  I figured that if I could get the first run of tiddly-piddly shopping out of the way, I'd feel less stress later in the week.  Inevitably, I will have to go again for whatever it is I forgot despite the fact that I made a very careful list, but at least I think I got most of what I'll need and what my pets will need while I'm gone.

While I was in Hell...um, I mean, shopping... I saw an iHome dock alarm clock in their sale aisle.  It was last year's model and the last one they had or something, so they'd shuffled it off to the "sell it fast and cheap" section.  It originally cost $50 and I managed to pick it up for $13.  I think that's a pretty nice shopping score, actually.  Since I have been deeply ambiguous about getting one of these, I was glad to find this one so cheap.

I think it's going to be just what I wanted.  I can charge my iPod on it (it doesn't do my iPhone, but I don't really listen to a lot of music off my iPhone anyway....) and use my iPod as part of my alarm clock aparatus now.  I can also listen to music in bed without having to hook the iPod up to some elaborate and difficult clock radio system not made for that .  Of course, being the Queen of Geeks, my favorite part is that now I can run iLava all the time and it won't run down the battery....  What can I tell you?  It's the little things that get me through these troubled times.....

Another thing I love about it is that I can just cut the lights on it OFF.  I hate light in the room while I'm trying to sleep.  I'm incredibly photosensitive.  Part of it has to do with my being a migraineur, I think.  If there's a lot of light coming into a room, even from a really bright alarm clock or a night light, I have to figure out some way to block it off.  I don't do the whole eye mask thing because it feels weird, but whoever designed this was thoughtful.  The clock will light up if you want it to, stay on like a night light if you like, or cut off if you want darkness.  Thank you, world of choice. 

Anyway, I'm looking forward to having music to doze off to now.  I haven't had that for a long time.  I used to love to use the sleep function on my old clock radio before I replaced it with my MoonBeam clock.  Now that I'm back to something that does music again, I guess I'll have to made a very short playlist of something dreamy.  I'm thinking that my usual listening fare isn't going to give me peaceful, fluffy-cloud dreams, somehow...

The Heart of Blue

The sky today was the most incredible shade of blue.  Just driving was a pleasure if I could look up into all that azure glory.  I wished for wings or for some improbable fantasy moment where my car left the road and suddenly floated upward.  I felt like I could happily drown in it.  I felt like I could reach up and grab a corner, could wrap it around myself like a warm blanket and sleep safely, suspended in that cloudless sky like some unfathomable resting place above everything.  Every word I know for blue flickered through my mind and felt like silken ribbons trailing through my fingers; there were shades that were cerulean, indigo, sky, true....  I feel moved to composition by that blueness, and maybe I'll post what I produce later if anything comes of it.  In the meantime, the sky now is royal darkening to navy, patiently waiting for the pearl stickpin of the full moon to be laid gently upon it.  What a lovely set of shades remains to be enjoyed.  Even though the sun is down, the heart of blue remains.

Freedom of Speech Quote

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
~ Soren Kierkegaard

Disconnection

Just when I think that everything that can happen has, another bomb drops, another knock at the door happens, another tremor shakes the foundations.  I'm past the point of being able to respond appropriately, I think.  I feel a constant hum of it, a physical sensation, and everything else becomes a touch, too, unpleasantly so, every word, every action around me, as stress makes me too sensitive to everything. 

I drove home this afternoon with no sense of being in this world at all.  I'm sure there was music on the radio, and I'm sure that is was, as usual, up loud.  I'm sure that there were other cars on the road and that I drove my accustomed speed, but the only thing about it I remember was being amused that the song "Under Pressure" by Bowie was on as I stopped at a light and that I noticed it was starting to get dark.  I couldn't tell you with any accuracy if that's because it was late or because rain was threatening. 

Stability needs to return.  Until it does, I guess I'll huddle here and try to heal myself in this brief moment of respite.

Hughes

I came home with a need to read Langston Hughes tonight.  I grabbed my massive Collected Poems and started flipping, slowly savoring, and revisited some of my favorites, wandered over some less familiar territory.  Sometimes I just need Hughes.  I don't know what it is about his voice that speaks to certain moods of mine.  I love McKay, too, and Cullen is wonderful in his way, but when I sit down to read for the joy of the words and the way they flow across the page in beautiful drifts, Hughes is hard to beat. 

His longer poems are wonderful, full of power, but tonight, it's not those weighty works that are calling me.  I'm flipping through and reading the little ones, the brief and shimmering bits.  He was a master of packing much into little, and I think it's nice, sometimes, just to look at those poems and appreciate them.  

I'm going to share a few that caught my eye tonight.  They are in no particular order.  I hope they please you as they did me.

Star Seeker

I have been a seeker
Seeking a flaming star,
And a flame white star
Has burned my hands
Even from afar.

Walking in a dream-dead world
Circled by iron bars,
I sought a singing star's
Wild beauty.
Now behold my scars.

Heaven

Heaven is
The place where
Happiness is
Everywhere.

Little Lyric (Of Great Importance)

I wish the rent
Was heaven sent.

and one last one:

History

The past has been a mint
Of blood and sorrow.
That must not be
True of tomorrow.

Flight of the Muse

It's February.  The local contest is here.  I have nothing.  I'm empty.  AAAAARRRRRRGGGHHHHH.....

There's a piece I wrote earlier this year, and I think it's strong, but it's not ready yet.  It needs to tumble around in that rock polisher between my ears for awhile yet before I send it anywhere.

I wrote something about New Orleans, too, after I came back from my recent sojourn there, but it's a little on the dark side, a little eerie, and it's the most recent thing I have produced.  I need to work on it more than any of the others.  I'm going back to NOLA soon, too, and I want to see if I still feel the same about the poem and the city after this second trip there.  Travel always makes me write, and I was in such a whirl during that first trip that there wasn't any time to do more than get fleeting impressions.

There's a piece I started,felt strongly about, and shelved called "For the Girls" that was inspired by watching the interaction between my students, watching how mean they can be to each other sometimes when one of them doesn't quite fit the expected pattern or is a little different.  It, too, is too rough to send. It needs pruning, like a wild-growth shrub that sprang up too fast.  I wrote three pages worth of that one before I put it away for later.

I guess it's not true then, to say that I have nothing.  I guess it's more a problem that everything I have is weak and unfinished, like a string of houses the builder walked away from, windows gaping open, doors unhung.  I don't know whether or not to try to get something together or just to skip it this year.  I need my muse to descend and slap me around some so I can get something concretely polished.  Maybe a miracle will happen here in the next few days. 

The "Real" Housewives

Bravo has a lot of reality TV these days.  They have a whole string of shows that are variations on a theme, the Real Housewives series.  I know you've probably seen the commercials if you're here in the States.  They go to Orange County, New York, and Atlanta and follow a group of ultra-rich women around as they basically ham it up and fight with one another.  What the hell kind of entertainment is this? 

Granted, okay, I've never seen more than about five minutes of any of these, and that was only because I was in the kitchen or the middle of something I couldn't turn loose of to get to the remote after a show I do watch ended.  What little of them I have seen has consisted of catfights, romantic melodrama, excessive spending, and dubious parenting.  Again, I ask, why is this entertainment?

It pains me to watch someone wreck their lives or the lives of others when its fictional.  How much worse is it when it's real?  These shows have been on for several years now, so we've been privy to all sorts of moments and momentous decisions that probably are absolutely none of our business at all.  Why?

To me, these shows are a part of a larger trend in culture to make the private public.  I don't believe that every single thing in a person's life is the public property of the whole world.  There seems to be a growing Brave New World mentality that "everybody belongs to everyone else."  I don't care for that very much.  Maybe it's because I've read that book so often and I know how it turns out.  Maybe it's because I am, at heart, such an intensely private person myself. 

"But you write a blog," you say.  "You're putting your life out there for others to view."  Yeah.  You're right.  I do.  And some of the stuff I share here is very personal indeed.  However, that being said, I do not have a camera following me around every day (at least not with my knowledge...otherwise, greetings Big Brother, and that's the end of my dystopian novel allusions, I swear....) watching me fall on my face and screw up for the amusement of the whole world.  What you see here is what I want you to see.  Think of me as a magician on the stage, the juggling fool and not the trainwreck on the news.  To me there is a difference.

Maybe that's the way the Housewives think of their shows, too.  Maybe once those cameras stop rolling, they take off their cat claws, put away their damp hankies, kick off their heels, and just are.  Maybe, after all of it, there is not much reality to it at all. I guess I'll never know.  I wish we could find a way to be more fascinated by things other than the spectacle presented.   

Recycling the Barn

I made something for the first time today in a long time.  I haven't done anything useful with my hands in ages. I've been thinking though, about doing something with one of my favorite quotes by Emerson for some time now, and cruising around on Etsy has been inspirational.  I wanted to have the quote up in my room, but I didn't just want to print it off and frame it.   I wanted an actual piece of something with it on it.  Today, I decided I would see about making something to fulfill that desire.

I started with a piece of old oak barnboard from the collapsed structure on the north side of my property.  I poked around out there, and even though most of the siding was stripped off it two years ago before it fell down to help make the Red Field cabin, I was able to find an interestingly-shaped piece and extract it from the pile.  I took my grandfather's hand sander and went after it to clean it up a bit after I got all the old nails out.  When I got the roughness and dirt off, a beautiful pattern of graining appeared where the board had been planed.  I don't know enough about such things to know if these are hand-planing marks or the marks of one of the old sawmills that ran around here, but it's not the sort of thing you see on modern wood.  When I put the final coats of sealer on it and bring out the detail in the wood, it's going to be gorgeous.

I sat down in the floor with my calligraphy lettering book and some paintbrushes and lettered  in my quote.  That took me about an hour and a half to do.  Trying to do some of that fancy lettering with a paint brush on a rough board surface might not have been the best of all choices, but I think it came out okay.  I should have put the paint in a squeeze bottle and done it that way.  It would have given me a "pen nib" to work with instead of the spreadable brush fibers.  Oh well.....

When I was done lettering, I looked at the piece and it was missing something.  I thought about the quote, and I knew I'd like to add some symbol of knowledge, but I knew that I wanted whatever I added to be something from the barn, something in keeping with the style of the board.  It came to me quickly to cut something out of the tin from the roof.  I've seen lots of things in catalogs and at craft shows where people have taken old license plates and so forth and done projects, so I decided why not try to do something with that roofing tin?  I went and borrowed a pair of tin snips from my father and came back with the plan to cut out an owl for my piece.

I'm glad I formulated the world's simplest owl pattern.  Good LORD.  Scissors and paper, it ain't.  There has to be an easier way to cut tin.  Otherwise, how do all these craftspeople do it?  I got the owl done, but it took me at least an hour to get it there.  Once I was satisfied with the shape, I hand shaped it to give it a little dimension and started applying some color other than that already present from the rust.

 The owl is drying now.  Once all the paint has had a chance to cure, I'll assemble it and do any last minute touchups or corrections.  Then I'll seal the whole thing.  I think it's going to look pretty good considering this is my first project of this kind ever.  I like the look of the owl, especially.  I may try to do more to recycle pieces out of the old barn.  I like the idea of giving things from it new life.  It feels good.

The Blue Eagle Returns

After a frustrating afternoon of trying to install my doc cam and not being able to do it (why, oh why won't that USB connection error stop???), I came home expecting a very lackluster evening.  There was a minor moment of excitement and curiosity due to a large and unusual piece of telephone company equipment parked in my pasture.  They're laying new phone line here, and if you've never seen the machine they use to do that, it's really sort of fascinating.  I had no idea it kind of  injects the line into the ground.  They're working now, in fact.  I think I may go out and watch them in awhile.  How often does that happen, after all?

I opened my mailbox once that minor mystery was resolved and gathered what was there.  In it was a small, flat, red, white, and blue USPS mailer envelope.  I was instantly happy.  There was only one thing that could be that size:  my passport.  I had applied for my renewal the last week of January, and just that act had been refreshing to my soul.  I hadn't realized how much I missed just knowing it was sitting there, safely waiting for me to grab it and head off somewhere. 

My passport had expired several years ago, but I hadn't gotten it renewed because I hadn't had an immediate travel need for it.  I should have realized that just having it there was a type of need.  There is a calmness that comes from knowing that if a trip comes up, I can go.  If I decide at some point for some reason to go abroad, the biggest legal hurdle, that official document, is already secured.

It frees up my daydreaming, and apparently something in my subconscious mind as well because I dreamed of moving away last night.  The place I moved to was a mixture of Japan and Ireland, all mountains, sea, and verdant everywhere I looked.  I don't know exactly what place my brain was cooking up, but it was gorgeous and full of peace and wonder.  Maybe having the passport will be a ticket back to the land of dreaming if nothing else.

The Things That Thrill Me

So apparently I'm getting a doc cam soon at school.  Freakin' YES.  I can't wait to have that thing set up on my desk and running.  I've been wanting one for years, and I've really been craving one since I saw a teacher at the school we visited in NOLA using hers with her AP classes.  There are so many applications for one in English that it practically boggles the mind.  I have so many things that I like to show students that I can just pop under the doc cam now and make huge.  Students can put samples of their own work up for discussion.  I can share my annotations on texts when we are doing discussion.  I guess, if things get really desperate, we can make hand puppets under it, too....

Tech stuff thrills me.  All the way down to my geekish socks and Chucks.  I know the toys are bells and whistles and that none of them are necessary for good teaching, but man oh man, they make the job so much easier, so much more appealing.  They also save me time and help me innovate.  Every time I get a new tool or have a new service placed at my disposal, my little brain starts turning, and I start coming up with new projects, new ways to approach my curriculum, new angles in to that knowledge.  It stays fresh for me and hopefully it's enjoyable and challenging for the students, too. 

We have some new things headed our way soon, and I have just been to a tech conference, so all I need now is a little time to scheme...er...plan.  That's what I meant to say.  Plan.  Right.  Plan. 

Oh, I Couldn't Ever Have Said It Better....

Valentines Day Quotes, Sayings for Your Valentine: "We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love. ~Author Unknown"

Oh, how perfect a quote for Valentine's Day! Oh, how perfectly it sums up the goal for my life! Yes, and yes, and yes again.... Sigh....

The Need for Courage

I need more courage.  For some things, I am fearless. I am not afraid to go to new places, to move to new countries by myself, to live alone.   For others, I can conquer what fear I do have and go forward into whatever consequences there are. I don't fear confrontation, at least not usually, and I have (famously or notoriously) no problem expressing my opinions in word or speech.   For others, though, for the things that probably matter the most, I cannot seem to break out of patterns I established so long ago.  It's the simple personal interactions that scare me stiff.

How do I repattern myself?  I ask myself that question over and over again.  I have friends who are truly bold, who have gone out and who have grasped those things they want with both triumphant hands.  I continue to sit in my tower and watch, afraid. And don't tell me, "Carpe Diem."  Don't tell me, "What's it going to hurt to try?" 

In the moments when I'm faced with those situations, it's like I'm back on top of that tall tower in Wales again, hooked to that rappelling harness again.  I want to do it, I want to go down the side, but I am frozen, unable to trust in the equipment I have.  That decision didn't feel nearly as hard as some others I wind up in, as some of the situations I've been in lately, even.

Maybe someday when it's really important,  I will have the courage it takes.  Maybe that will be the only thing that really matters and I can be forgiven for all my fear if I can conquer it in that one shining moment. I hope that day comes.

Kayak Kissing Commercial

I guess this would make a meeting a lot more interesting.  Unfortunately, I always wind up as the guy to the right....

Birthday

I had a good one this year.  My best friend had a day of stuff planned, so I was just sort of carried from place to place for a day.  It was wonderful not to have to choose what to do or where to go since I spend almost every minute of every day making those decisions for myself and others.  I loved everything we did.  The food we had was wonderful, and we painted pottery which was something I haven't done since I worked for a ceramics studio in college.  It was relaxing because I was making something, and it also brought back a lot of old memories. 

After painting, we went to Borders, and of course, I am always in my home territory in a real bookstore.  I enjoy just the energy of being in them.  I found two good things to read, one for AP, and one for personal amusement. 

After I got back from Jackson, I went to the hospital to see a friend of mine's little girl.  She and I share the same birthday.  She got sick the evening of the 12th, and she's been having tests and procedures ever since.  I remember what it was like to be little and sick, and I know all too well what it's like to have your birthday suck, so I wanted to take her something.  I found a very cute little giraffe at Babies-R-Us in Jackson (one of the scariest places I think I've ever been) and took it to her since, you know, giraffes make all things better.  She seemed to be doing okay, but she already understood the mechanics of hospitals at age 3, knowing that she couldn't go home as soon as they put the IV in her hand.  I wish no child ever had to have that knowledge.

Dinner and Disquiet

I had a chance last night to have dinner with someone I haven't seen since high school.  We've been chatting some on FaceBook, that mass meeting place of people past and present, and it was so good to see him again.  He, too, left here after college and went elsewhere.  Unlike me, though, he hasn't decided to come back.  He was home to visit, and as we ate and talked, I saw this place through his eyes.

He asked me what there was that is exciting.  I wanted to laugh.  Not a thing.  This is not a place that does exciting.  I talked about a couple of things that have changed here recently, and they are big, good things, really, but not things that probably will thrill the soul of someone accustomed to the pace of a faster life.

We talked about living abroad and it stirred memories in me of what it was like to be somewhere else, to be in that life again.  Inevitably, he asked me why I stay here.  I answered him as I always do, that I haven't been given any sign that I'm supposed to be somewhere else, but I felt so frustrated by that answer.  Do I love what I do here?  Yes.  Still.  In spite of it all.  Does some part of me still look to the skies and wonder about soaring again?  I can't say that's not true.  What's wrong with me?  Why does there have to be this perpetual yearning, this constant struggle if this is the right place?

My friend will get on a plane again in two days and plunge back into that other life.  I remember what that was like.  I remember the dual-edged feeling, the pain of leaving my family and friends and the soaring excitement of heading back into that other place, into my life.  Part of me can't help but envy him spreading those wings and flying away even while another part of me is still glad to be standing firmly on the ground.  I wonder if these two disparate people will ever find a way to be at peace.

Highway Freaks

On the way home from Jackson tonight, something odd happened.  I was flying down the interstate as usual listening to my iPod, thoughts rambling idly over the events of the conference I'd left behind not long before.  It was dark, and I was both passing vehicles and being passed depending on the different speeds we all were traveling.  I was somewhere deep in Bienville National Forest where the exits are few and far between when the idiot in the Suburban pulled up behind me.

He came flying up fast while I was pulled out to pass something else, and I pulled in to let him by.  He zipped past and pulled in ahead of me.  Then he slowed way down.  This happens.  People don't use cruise control.  They get a phone call.  They suddenly realize they are driving at a ridiculous speed.  Whatever.  I pulled out and went to pass him. 

He sped up. 

I used the might and power of my four cylinder engine and got around him.  By this point, I was doing about 80.  I don't usually drive that fast unless I'm having a bad day and am listening to loud rock.  It was night, I was in deer country, and the only angry I was was at the weirdo in the truck.

A few minutes later, he came slowly cruising up around me again, lingering in the passing lane.  I slowed down some, hoping he'd just go.  Again, he pulled in ahead of me and slowed down.  I slowed down, too, intending to force him to go on, but he kept losing speed.  I pulled out to pass, and he started accelerating again, keeping pace with me as I steadily went faster and faster. 

I redlined it, hit 85 or 90 and fled.  He dropped back for awhile, but I slowed down after a few miles, and next thing I knew he was right back in my rear view mirror on my bumper.  I called home at that point because I felt like I needed to tell somebody something.  It was creeping me out.  I felt like I was trapped in a TV show or a melodramatic novel.  I was about a minute away from calling the Highway Patrol when I saw the lights of a major exit I knew up ahead. 

There was also finally another vehicle around us, an eighteen-wheeler, and I stuck my little Cruiser to the back of it like a scared kitten to its mother until I could take the exit.  The Suburban stayed behind me until the last minute, and then it pulled around the truck and went on.  I sat at a gas station at that exit for awhile, just trying to get my nerve back before I came the rest of the way home. 

I've never had anything like that happen to me before.  The plates on the vehicle, what little of them I saw, were in state, and fairly local.  The whole thing made me wish I was driving my dad's huge four-wheel drive Dodge so I could have just been like, "Keep screwing with me, buddy.  I will just freakin' drive over you."  I hope I never go through any more interstate fun like that again. 

Podcasting

I finally got to go to a hands-on podcasting session today.  I am amazed how simple it finally turned out to be.  Sometimes, I just need somebody to sit me down and walk me through it.  (Kinesthetic learner, much?)  We used Macs and GarageBand, and never, never have I wanted a Mac so much as I did when we were working with that software.  It was just so freakin' easy.  Everything was intuitive and drag-and-drop simple.

As much as I love this little netbook for its size and portability, I wish it had some of the programs that MacBook did.   Why can't the computer companies "play nice" together and give us all something that's sort of the best of all of it?  I know, I know...and the spheres will align and cats and dogs will dance together....

Anyway, that little philosophical excursion aside, I think I can do the whole podcasting thing now.  I want to try to make a few on my own, and I have a couple of ideas for some projects for my classes, too.  I just need some time to plan.  It seems like my head is full to bursting with good ideas, projects, and units, but I have no time to plan.  All my time is consumed with red tape and trivia.  Maybe I can just focus on one big new thing and develop it in the next little while.  If nothing else, maybe summer will give me some time. 

My students do such amazing work with all the things I put in front of them.  They are naturally able with technology.  I just can't imagine what sort of wonders they would come up with if I can just get a little bit of time together to make a unit where their end product is a podcast.  It should be (once I get the groundwork done) a lot of fun, too.  Now if only we had a cart of MacBooks.....  Oh Technooooloooogyyyyyy......

The Magic Carpet

While I was in New Orleans, I got to go to Arcadian Books and poke around just a little.  We only had a few minutes to browse, but in that time, I managed to find a signed copy of the Ellen Douglas/Walter Anderson book The Magic Carpet.  It was, in fact, one of the first books that caught my eye, almost like it was sitting there on that high shelf waiting on me. I grabbed it quickly and tucked it under my arm with a heart filled with glee.  It is, after all, February, the month I fill with those tiny little delights to fend off the Birthday Crap.  This jewel qualifies in the extreme. 

The Magic Carpet is a combination of Walter Anderson's woodcuts for folk and fairy tales and Ellen Douglas' prose retellings of the tales that inspired him to make those wonderful works.  This is the first time I've actually been able to get my hands on it although I've been wanting it for years.  It's so lovely it makes me sigh.

I love Walter Anderson's art in all the forms I've found it, watercolor, woodcut, carved figure, ceramic form....  His watercolors are experiments in the spirit translated into solid form, and his woodcuts always remind me of the art of some lost culture.  I have several of them bought from Realizations on the coast hung in various places here in the house.  The combination of his otherworldly art and Douglas' sensitive and unusual tellings of these familiar tales makes for a book I can pick up with pleasure again and again.

I have it sitting on the old army trunk I use for a coffee table.  It looks right there.  It is both something I've wanted for a long time and a reminder of a good recent trip.  I guess it was an early present from the Crescent City.

What I Want for My Birthday

My birthday slips closer on little velvet cat feet, and people, especially my parents, have started asking me what I want this year.  I haven't the faintest idea.  I know I need to come up with some kind of list, but the truth is I don't know.  There isn't any one item or object I've been yearning for (well, other than a big Hemi Charger, and I think it unlikely that I'll get that for a birthday gift), and anything small I have a tendency to pick up for myself all along. 

What I really want for my birthday, of course, is not something that can easily be wrapped up.  I'd like a clear sense of where I'm going in the next few years.  Maybe somebody could give me a crystal ball of some kind.  Alternately, I could also use a big compass with a needle that always points toward the right thing, the right people.  Sometimes lately, I feel like I'm wandering a little lost. 

Then again, maybe I'm just supposed to get a sense of contentment for my birthday.  That won't be something I can get from anyone but myself.  Maybe that's what I'll see about wrapping up for myself.

Wrack-a-frackin' iTunes

I have spent most of the evening trying to reload my iPhone.  This morning, iTunes notified me that it was time to download the newest version and I did.  I needed to update my iPhone, so I hooked it up after the upgrade was done, and that's when the real fun began.  I got the first error message telling me that iTunes didn't recognize my phone anymore.  It suggested reformatting my phone.  I had dropped it this morning, and although I thought it was okay, I thought maybe something had gotten messed up without my realizing it, so I decided to go ahead with the reset. 

After the reset, iTunes could recognize the phone, but all my apps were gone.  Nothing bought from iTunes would load.  I "wasn't authorized" on this computer anymore, never mind the fact that this is the computer I've been using the whole time....  AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH........

I redownloaded a new copy of iTunes and had it "repair" itself.  It then suddenly realized that, oh my gosh, yes, by cracky, it could connect to the iTunes store, and lookit, I really HAD paid for all that stuff (even if it was free), and it condescended to reload my phone very, very slowly. 

If you think it took a long time to read, you have no idea how many hours it took to do.  Thank God there were reruns of  I Love Lucy on to keep me laughing in the interval.  I have very limited patience with things like this anyway, so only Lucy cramming chocolates down her blouse and spying on Bill Holden coupled with the knowledge that fragile iPhones shouldn't fly kept me from playing expensive frisbee once or twice today.   Next time, I won't reset the phone.  I'll start with a clean install of iTunes first.

Random Stuff

Nothing deep tonight.  I'm tired and a little sad tonight, so I definitely don't feel much like philosophy.  I don't want to talk about the sources of the sadness here, so I'm going to focus on totally irrelevant fluff instead.  Excuse my indulgence and escapism. Perchance it will elevate my mood.

I got my lightsaber chopsticks from ThinkGeek today.  They are awesome.  I can't wait to use them.  I got the Vader ones, so they're bright red, too, and cheery.  I don't know exactly how durable they will be, but they look great.  I will try to refrain from waving them around in the air and making sound effects. 

I also finally got a hard case for my iPhone.  I spend a long time looking at different cases and trying to decide, but I wound up with a wooden case made from actual redwood.  It feels really good in my hand, it protects the phone admirably, and it is really different from everything else I saw.  I love the fact that it's wood and not plastic or silicone.  It didn't cost any more than the other types of cases, and it even allows me to remove the bottom so I can dock it.  It was just what I wanted.

After being out of school for three days, it was so nice just to be back in my classroom today.  I missed my students so much.  They were glad to see me because they didn't have a huge pile of sub work, but I was glad to see them because it was them.  They're the reason I keep doing this, after all.

I'm getting ready to do Shakespeare's biography tomorrow.  I can't wait.  I love Shakespeare.  I know it may not thrill the students' soul, but it is always a highlight of my year.  Shakespeare makes me happy.  I hope the crew I have this year will go with me on the journey. 

I think this is enough random bouncing for tonight.  I'm going to go grab 72 pounds of  dog or so and go to bed.  Maybe a snoring pit bull will be a remedy for the blues.

New Orleans

I just got back from a professional trip to New Orleans.  I haven't been there since I was six or seven years old, and I remember almost nothing about that trip, so this was really like a first trip down for me.  Because my main focus was the school visit we were on, I didn't have a lot of time to do the touristy thing, but I did get to do some.  Mostly, I walked and walked. 

It's an old, old place.   It feels that way, too.  The age seeps up from the damp ground like a vapor.  It had that river-city feel to it, but it also had a feeling far different from Memphis or St. Louis.  I didn't feel like Memphis or St. Louis would swallow me down by accident.  New Orleans kind of felt that way.  Oh, it wouldn't be a personal thing, really.  Probably, it would have been an accident.  But I would be gone all the same. 

I think I needed more time with the city to shake that impression, time to be there in the clear light of day instead of traipsing around the dark streets at night, time to see more that just the tourist dives, time to see the true history.  I will go back down and try it again.  Any city with so much heart deserves a deeper exploration.