Death at Prayer

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

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

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

Vincent and the Doctor

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

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

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

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

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

Classics

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

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

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

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

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

The Illusionist

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

The Illusionist

Poetry and magic

elevate the ordinary

reveal that world

inside a grain of sand

believe the impossible

and on good days

turn horror into beauty

waltz the truth into unwilling minds

like a party crasher at a masked ball

ripping away the domino suddenly

with a self-deprecatory grin

and the slow unfurling

of a graceful hand

Both require absolute dedication

an apprenticeship to the craft

a certain native skill with deception

a touch of divine madness

much blind luck

Practitioners jealously hoard secrets

eye one another territorially

stalking cats in narrow alleys

and even if smiles are friendly

each really thinks

his way of performing

that particular trick

is better than yours

I unveil the worn gilt-edged tools

of my illusion

all the things

borrowed, bought, won, forged, or stolen

stand before you

in the center of this paper stage

fan my fingers wide to show

my virtue

my total honesty

praying I've left behind no tell-tale trace of

wires, springs, chains

everything that's hidden

under these somber black robes

to make it appear effortless

You'll see

what I want you to see, actually

Nimble misdirection

you applaud the

a white dove suddenly soaring free

instead of the broken body

the flattened cage

which is

I'm sorry to reveal

probably always closer to the truth

of how these things really happen

It's all leading up to the grand finale

those swords in the corner

you've been eying all night

thinking they can't be real

every one unique and appalling

terror fabricated for effect

like that menacing silent cabinet

with the lock on the door

This trick is my specialty

the one everybody demands

a real killer

so it comes last

and maybe even a little reluctantly

Sometimes it's a little hard

to step out and take the bows

showmanship requires

when done

I'm locking myself inside

the mystic darkness again

feeling those familiar blades

grate on bone

and you

check your watch

glance at the door

think of heading for the exit

to beat the crowd

wondering how anybody

could ever believe in anything

as false as this

Out of Print Clothing

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

Thumbs

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

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

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

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

Bloomington, Again

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

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

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

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

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

Thought on Politics

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

Shakespeare in the Park

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

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

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

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

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

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

Billy Collins Reads

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

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

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

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

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

Appropriate Quote for the Day

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

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

The Reading Continues

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

The Reason I Have Comment Moderation on This Thing

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

Intimidated

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

St. Cecilia

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

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

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

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

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

The Little Things

It's amazing how little we pay attention to the tiny things that drive the modern world, how much we take them for granted.  This piece of jewelry from beadworkbyamanda on Etsy is made from a circuit board, and although it is basically the recycling of something that is scrap, waste, it is art, lovely, elegant, beautiful in its lines and colors.  Why don't we pay attention to the beauty that is beneath the surface of things?

I have always been curious about the inside.  Part of that undoubtedly comes from the fact that from the time I was small, I watched my father working on electronics, opening them up, pulling them apart and putting them back together again.  I have bits and pieces of them that I found pretty or fascinating around the house from old models. 

The interest about the inside, though, for me goes deeper than just the machines we use.  I am also fascinated by the interior of us.  I was a biological sciences major going into college because I wanted to know more and more about how life functioned.  The more I knew, the more I was in a state of constant humble wonder at the miraculous majesty of God's design.  Although my career ran more to words and their internal workings than nature's internal gearings ultimately, I still love to read about it on a layman's level.

We need to pay attention more.  Whether it's taking the time to read up on the latest natural phenomenon, to look at the inside of an old-fashioned pocket watch when the opportunity presents itself, or to try understand the complexities of our own health issues when we face them, I believe Bacon's old axiom, "Knowledge is power."  Even more importantly and equally true, though, Knowledge is profound enjoyment, and there's little enough of that in the world.  We should seize that with both hands anytime we see it glimmering before us. 

Lightning Strikes

I went to the Old Place today to spend some restorative time away.  I checked on the blackberries, but other than one or two earlies which I popped in my mouth and happily devoured, they aren't quite ready yet.  Maybe in about another week, I'll have baskets of delicious juicy fruit, though.  The brambles are full this year.  Last year, I missed them all because of my knee. 


I spent the day reading and driving my parents' new RTV around the pastures.  They were up too working on some things and piddling around.  We finished the day by having dinner together on the porch at Red Field and watching the storm clouds gather.

As I was getting ready to leave, I walked back up the hill to where I'd parked my little car.  I can't drive all the way down to Red Field in the Cruiser because it's too low.  I came through the little path into the upper pasture, and when I looked up, the sky was exploding.

The lightning from a storm that was pounding some distance away, across the ridgetops from where I was, was striking straight down in those photograph-worthy bolts.  I drove my car to the gate and turned the engine off.  I just watched for awhile.  It was remarkable.  Whenever there is a thunderstorm at school, I always feel so exposed and afraid ever since that static charge popped blue sparks off my shelves, but I felt no fear at all tonight, just wonder. 

I wish there had been somebody there to share it with.  That was all it needed to make it utterly perfect.  I sat and marveled for a long time, and then I came on home through the beginnings of light rain.  It's a good memory, even it came from bad weather.

Very True

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."  Douglas Adams

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.