Various

• At some point last night, I woke up with Yoda, my aged black cat, more or less sitting on my head.  She likes to curl around the crown of my head as I sleep, I suppose because of the body heat loss thing, but it was an odd sensation to wake up to, I must say.  Usually she stays on the pillow.  I don't know if I got too rambunctious in my tossing and turning or she got too cold, but she sort of draped herself over me a bit.  I think we're both hoping she doesn't choose to repeat it.  I didn't exactly respond well to being pinned down in that way.  She didn't exactly respond well to being thrown off in such an undignified manner....
• I'm much better today, Topamax-wise.  The fog has backed off, and I'm able to process the world as clearly as I ever can.  Everything seems a little bit too bright today, but that may just be because it is an incredibly sunny and lovely day and I have the blinds open.  Or maybe it's my photosensitivity.  Who the hell knows?  It's a neverending funorama over here. 
• Good thing with students:  I gave a bellringer prompt today asking them to write as if they were 70 or 80 years old and fuss about the "kids today."  It wound up being a riot.  They did voices.  They did "slang."  I laughed a lot.
• Bad thing with students:  Several of my AP students decided just not to come yesterday because there was a test that they weren't ready for.  I am soul-sick.  And disappointed.  And tired.  Very, very tired.
• I want a Fiat 500 Abarth.  Why?  Because it is small, cute, and fast as a bat out of perdition.  Also because they give you a day of training with a professional driver when you purchase one.  I want him (or her) to teach me how to powerslide.  Yeeeeeah.  
• I'm going to have something sweet tonight with dinner.  My fortune cookie Sunday told me I deserve dessert; by gum, I'm going to have it tonight.  I crave something ridiculous, maybe cheesecake-y?  I have had nothing of the sort for days and days.  TODAY, I MAKE ALL MY FORTUNE COOKIES COME TRUE!  (well, that one at least.  if anybody would like to volunteer for the others, let me know, particularly the ones concerning insane wealth, lasting happiness, or tall blue-eyed guys who are devoted to me)
• Saturday and Sunday I reread the first two books of The Hunger Games series.  I almost got through book three again, too.  I should finish it tonight.  I had forgotten how good they were.  For what they are, YA Fiction, they're well-done.  I don't know if the movie is as good, but I wanted to reread them before I think about venturing forth to see it.  And, believe it or not, I just might venture forth.  (that sound you heard?  that was the foundations of the earth cracking open...)
• I'm headed back to Moundville this weekend.  There is a fantastic show Saturday of Native American potters.  I can't wait to see it.  Si Dios quiere, I will be there doing what I love the most, taking pictures and reveling in first-class craftsmanship.  It should be amazing.  I've never seen an exposition of just Native American pottery, much less live demonstration.  Add the setting, and, well, how could I NOT go?

I think you're up-to-date.  Unless you're helping to make my fortune cookie come true, I think that's all you need to know.  If you're that guy who's volunteering for that, well, click below, darlin'......

Back in the Whirlpool

I had forgotten, I guess, what it's like to tinker with the Topamax dosage in a significant way.  Joy indescribable.  There is a reason you have to wean your body from it.  I cannot even imagine what it would be like to stop suddenly, to go from 200mg to nothing.  I think I would probably and quite literally shut down.

I'm writing this because I literally can't focus on anything else right now.  I hate this stuff.  How can anything be such a dual-edged sword, at one moment cutting through the pain in my head and letting me function and at the next slashing my most basic ability to process the world around me with any sort of reason?

Maybe I sound okay as I'm typing this to you, but you would not believe how much the little normal everyday words look wrong, how often I'm getting errors, and how frequently I'm having to stop to pull my eyes away from things in my classroom that suddenly just look....I don't know...miraculous?  Out of place?  Startling as if I'd never seen them before.  And this is when I can get my eyes to focus through the dim halo everything has, that lovely refraction that usually presages a migraine of epic proportions but today, just thanks to the damn Topamax, everything is graced with, a heavenly glow as if angels went around last night and rimed the whole world with rainbows just for me.

And then there are the long lost moments where I come to myself and I've simply been...away.  Someone walked by me this morning and asked me if staring at a particular spot on the hallway floor was a good way to make the day go by faster.  I don't know how long I'd been there in that pose.  Long enough to be noticeable.  I was not daydreaming.  I was just...not.  Perhaps my mind is in there somewhere, slamming bleeding hands against a thick glass wall and screaming, but all I'm hearing is echoes....

I suppose this is some sort of free psychedelic experience maybe, and I should be a good poet and enjoy it, but I don't.  I can't.  My mind is not in good order and not fully under my control.  Some portion of it seems to be out of focus like a lens that needs to be adjusted just slightly to get the picture clear again, but I can't find the right way to do it.  If you've never been in this situation, and really, I'm hoping for your sake you haven't, I don't know if I am getting the frustration of this across to you.  I need to be mentally sharp to do this job well, to feel myself.  My brain is not working, and I can't fix it.

The only consolation I have right now, my only mantra is, "Three More Months."  If I can make it three more months, and I can already tell they're going to be fantastic ones, if I can make it with a minimum of headaches (only 6 in a month!  I was having 2 per week...), then I don't have to have this crap in my life anymore.

Keeping or Cutting Loose

It's hard to let go of something you know you should when part of you wants to keep it.  Which part of that internal struggle should win?  Do you go with the little voice that tells you to cut your losses and get out before some melodrama filled with ridiculous words occurs, or do you listen to the part of you that insists that if it continues to bother you, then something remains worth salvaging?

Be damned if I know.

I just don't want to do this or feel this or think this at all.  It is so much easier to let it all fade into nothing, mist before the morning sun, something that wasn't strong enough to last, after all.  Everything has a natural lifespan, and when it is done, then it is time for it to die.  Human relationships are no exception.  Right?

Right?

Because I won't be the one holding on this time, the last one to leave the party. I just can't be.  I think instead, just for once, just for the sheer novelty of it, I'll go ahead and collect my coat, make my polite apologies and thank the host for a grand evening, get out ahead of the crowd.

And if I keep telling myself it's the smart thing to do long enough, maybe I'll even believe it.

Live from the Back Yard

The day was too glorious to stay in, and I brought the hammock out to enjoy it. Now I have sun and a million shades of green and dog companionship as the wind sighs through newly unfolded leaves. It's all good. I think I'll probably be here a good long time today.

All Good Things....

“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” ~ Orson Welles

I went to see my neurologist today, and since things are going well, he decided to start the process of taking me off the Topamax.  I couldn't be happier.  Topamax is a very mixed blessing for me, something that gives with one hand and takes with the other.  I have been on it so long now that I'm not sure what I'm like off it anymore.  It's been about five years (I think), and they've been long ones full of forgetfulness, language difficulties, weariness, and words that go missing at inopportune moments.  I cannot wait to get it out of my system if my poor stupid head will allow it.  If I can manage fewer than six headaches a month, I can stay off it.  We'll just have to see how it goes.

As of today, I have also decided not to fool with something else that I've found frustrating lately.  It's a more personal issue, but it has made me feel ridiculous and bad, and I decided a long time ago that I don't have to be stuck with situations of that type.  I'm not going to "talk it through."  I'm not going to "voice my concerns" because I don't think they matter, and so I won't waste the time doing it.  I'm just going to wash my hands and walk away.  The end.

It's odd to think of these endings coming.  I can only do what I can to follow the advice of Welles above.  I guess we'll just have to see if I stopped these stories at the right time to get happiness out of them after all.

Expectations

If you look up quotations about expectations online, you will find a million very encouraging snippets about how we become what we expect of ourselves.  I am not quite sure that is absolutely the truth, or at least the whole truth.  It's very nice to think that, but there's another ingredient in the mix that can't be ignored.  At the very least it has to be overcome:  the expectations of others.

Why do these matter?  Why am I writing about this on a gloomy rainy morning?

An email got me thinking about it, a petition from change.org concerning Trayvon Martin.  Expectations, what somebody thought he could be, determined his fate in the worst possible way.  No matter what he thought of himself or what his parents thought of him, he could not overcome the outside world's expectations of his behavior or his race.

The judgments we make of each other do matter.  When we look at each other and only see huge strips about which we have preconceived notions, we injure both the individual at hand and ourselves.  That's the best scenario.  The worst?  Well....I think we've seen it recently.  It involves snap decisions and funerals.

It's easy to say that we should just ignore the way others see us, rise and overcome, but the weight of it sits on us, molds us.  I see it every day in my classroom.  Students who have parents who expect them to do well generally do.  Students who have parents who berate them or ignore them frequently are lost or struggling.  This is simplistic, and of course, there is internal motivation in every case.  Some of the students who have parents who expect them to do well suffer from too much pressure, expectations that are unreasonable or too high.  Some of the students who have no expectations at all succeed because they create goals for themselves.   By and large, though, like water wearing away stone, the judgments of others can shape an individual.

I've experienced it myself.  I was a foreigner in a place where foreigners were dangerous, and despite my general lack of threatening-ness (not a word, but you get it), I was still treated like I might explode into violence at any moment.  Mothers pulled their children away.  Old women watched me warily or moved away on the train.  At first I was embarrassed.  Then I was confused.  Later I was angry.  I found myself wanting to react in the way they were fearing.   If you think I am a monster, well, then....  This was only after a couple of years in this place.  What would it have been like to grow up with these expectations surrounding me?

Of course, I never gave up who I was inside.  I had a strong grounding in who I was to support me. My own expectations for myself were always stronger than theirs for me, my own internal motivation was supreme, but I can't say I didn't feel it.  We have to be careful, I think to look at people as individuals and not stereotypes.  I guess that's harder, more time-consuming, but look at what can be prevented.

The Couch Got Me

Yesterday was tough, the getting back into the school routine, the adjusting all my internal clocks to the external realities of time zones, time shifts, and early morning alarms.  I had slept too little and worked too long by the time I'd gone in early to deal with whatever was waiting on me after a three-day absence and then stayed over late to tutor after school, and with an added trip to the funeral home on top of that, something that is always exceptionally difficult for me, I hardly knew where I was when I got home.

I microwaved something forgettable, paired it with pickle chips (which may be responsible for the dreams I had later), ate, and I think I was watching Top Gear when the couch got me.  I don't really remember.  Suddenly, I jerked awake, and amazingly enough Top Gear was still on.   Different shouty cars were being maxed out, but it was still Hammond, May, and Clarkson.  (Just how much TG DOES BBCA show on Mondays?  Wow.)  It was almost midnight.  Groggily, I forced myself off the couch, staggered around through my nightly routine of crating dogs, taking care of teeth and meds and pajamas and so on, and fell down again into the waiting arms of my own sweet bed.  I was unconscious almost before I got my iPhone into its dock.

Yeah.  So.  I guess sleep needs to be a priority and not an afterthough, huh?  When my body has had enough, it will just get me close to a flat surface and flip that off switch.

Claddagh Again

"The Claddagh's distinctive design features two hands clasping a heart, and usually surmounted by a crown. The elements of this symbol are often said to correspond to the qualities of love (the heart), friendship (the hands), and loyalty (the crown).

The way that a Claddagh ring is worn on the hand is usually intended to convey the wearer's romantic availability, or lack thereof.

Traditionally, if the ring is on the right hand with the heart facing outward and away from the body, this indicates that the person wearing the ring is not in any serious relationship, and may in fact be single and looking for a relationship: "their heart is open."  

When worn on the right hand but with the heart facing inward toward the body, this indicates the person wearing the ring is in a relationship, or that "someone has captured their heart".   

A Claddagh worn on the left hand ring finger facing outward away from the body generally indicates that the wearer is engaged.

When the ring is on the left hand ring finger and facing inward toward the body, it generally means that the person wearing the ring is married." ~ from www.claddaghring.com
___________________________

One of the main things I wanted to be sure to get while I was in Ireland was a Claddagh ring to replace the one I had bought last time that had gotten damaged to the point of being unwearable.  Really, that was such a metaphor for so many things in my life since that last trip...

The article I posted here kind of makes the Claddagh sound like a dating ring, a "hey, I'm single" or a "no, I'm not" sign.  I didn't want it for that reason.  (Although, as you can see from the picture above, I do have mine on in the correct manner.  Yeah.  That is mine and my "dainty little hand.")

I wanted the Claddagh for the same reasons I wanted it before.  Symbolism is in almost every piece of jewelry I buy, and I don't think you could ask for much more symbolism in a piece than there is in this one.  It's also symbolism I believe in.  Love, loyalty, and friendship.  This is what I'm looking for, and until I can find it all in one package, my ring will very much stay crown-down on my right hand, thank you very much.

This ring is heavier and simpler than the one I bought before, more durable, less likely to be damaged and lost.  That's as it should be.  Life is rough, and I'm not careful with my hands.  Let all my symbols be strong ones.

I'm happy to be able to look back down at my fingers and see that silver heart and crown again.  It is something that probably doesn't mean anything to anybody else, but it means something to me.  I can carry memories of Ireland with it and hope for the future that I will someday be able to find the person who will fit the three parts of its meaning, too.  Not bad for a bit of metal molded into a circle.  Not bad at all.  Symbols have all the power we're willing to give them, for good or for ill.  This one, then, for me is powerfully rich and positive. Spero, indeed.

Idle Fancy

Standing on the grounds of Oxford, I felt two things simultaneously:  overwhelming admiration for and desire to be a part of this center for learning and incredible intimidation.  One of the students from another group made the comment to me as I was photographing details on one of the buildings that all the structures looked like castles.  I told him that they were.  They were castles dedicated to knowledge instead of warfare.

What would it be like to be a part of that rarefied air? Those heavy layers of tradition?  To have the right to walk those grounds like one who belongs instead of a tourist?  Could that ever be me?  Could I ever be a part of that culture of knowledge?

Both Trinity College and Oxford made me feel that way, that same yearning, but could I hack it at that level?  Those schools call to me in ways that no university on American soil seems to be able to do.  I have never been intrigued by Ivy League prestige.  Maybe it's the age of TC and Oxford.  Maybe it's those I know have been through them.  Maybe it's where they are, those locations that pull me like iron filings to their great magnetic hearts.  

I wish I could have the opportunity to prove myself in one or the other, to take something other than photographs, postcards, and t-shirt souvenirs away.  While I know this is just an idle fancy, something improbable and shiny to turn over in my mind from time to time, it is one I can't quite bring myself to let go of just yet.

Rugby

So we're in this pub in Dublin for dinner, and the Six Nations Rugby Championship is on.  I'm vaguely familiar with the concept of it because it comes on BBC America every year, but I've really not paid that much attention to it.  Mostly, I've always associated rugby with two things: this t-shirt guys at State used to wear that said "Donate Blood.  Play Rugby" which amused me, and my absolutely drop-dead-gorgeous, sweet-as-pie neighbor from the Cotton District who helped coach football at MSU and played rugby for "fun."  He could also sort of lift large pieces of furniture with one hand...

I'm sorry.  I think I got distracted.  What was I saying?

Oh yeah.  Rugby.  Dublin.

We watched the game while we ate, but we didn't get to see it all. I realized pretty quickly that the game was more interesting than I had thought.  Today I watched the championship game between England and Ireland from the comfort of my own couch, and I confirmed that I really might be into this game for several reasons.

First and foremost, it always moves.  One of the dullest things about American Football is all the waiting and setting up of plays.  There are flashes of brilliant and glorious motion, but there is a tremendous amount of everybody just standing around, too.  Rugby is 80 minutes of almost continuous motion.  The ball touched the ground?  Big woo.  Bunch of big guys jump another guy?  Yay.  Keep going.  There are certain things that are bad sportsmanship that stop the game, but other than that, pick up the damn ball and keep playing.  What kind of sissy are you that you need to stop every five seconds?  Love it.  Love it.

Second, the kicking game is strategic.  Everybody is a kicker, and kicking is not just a way to score.  It's a defensive weapon, too.  It's a way to screw the other team.  To a certain degree, this is true in American football, too.  A good kicker can pin the other team far back in their own territory, and then your defensive line can annihilate them, but it's much more than that in rugby because kicking doesn't happen only as a beginning or last-ditch option.  It can happen at any time.  That makes it more important to be good at it, precise and accurate at where you send the ball when you do it.  Foot chess.  Heh.

Then there's the scrum.  I don't even know where to start with this.  The psychology of this and the brute force.  Let's just get everybody in a big wedge and run into each other.  Oh.  And let's throw a ball in the middle.  Yeah.  It reminds me a little of sumo, only with a LOT of guys.  There's that same sort of mental thing going on before they smash into each other and start shoving.  It's really cool.

I dig the referee (that may not be the right term for him; I'm still learning terms and rules and whatnot), too.  He's only one guy out there running around yelling at them and fussing at them like somebody's mom.  He was cracking me up.  I actually saw one screw up today and ADMIT IT.  You never see that in other sports.  They're always like gods, pissy and untouchable.  Control of the behavior (adherence to the rules) was of paramount concern, and what he spent most of his time talking to them about.  And when he fussed at them, they pulled their act together.  I kept thinking about the difference between American football players with their endless attitudes and that.  It was not a balance that came out very positively for football, if you want to know the truth.  I mean, I know there was probably all manner of nasty crap going on out there, and egos that had their own gravitational pull, but you just didn't get that impression as they played.  It was sort of nice.

Then there were the players themselves.  They were...lovely.  Yeah.  Built just a little heavier than soccer players but mostly lighter than American football players, and I would have to say possibly (God forgive me) smarter because of all the decisions going on and the tactical analysis needed to succeed in a constantly shifting game of that type.  Yeah.  I'd gladly have picked one of those up on my trip, but oddly, they didn't have them in the shops.  Go figure.

Well, it gives me something else to pursue, anyway.  (The sport.  Not the players.  They run too fast.)  I need to learn more about the rules.  I guess that's what God made Google for, though right?

Shakespeare Land

Tuesday, I got to go to Stratford-upon-Avon, or as I grew to think of it, Shakespeare Land.  Although I had been before on a flying trip through, this time I got to see several things I had long wanted to see.  It was a strange, but good trip.

Our wonderful EF tour director, Hadleigh, prepped us for arrival with a detailed lecture about Shakespeare's life.  It sort of kills me how casual the English are with their famous people, even their monarchs.  I love it.  Everybody is like a member of the family, deserving of a nickname and the loving scorn you'd give a cousin or brother who gets into trouble but is still loved.  I guess this is a Southern thing, too, because I totally understand that.  Anyway, he called Shakespeare "Shakey."  Love it.

Our first stop in "Shakey" Land, then, was at Anne Hathaway's Cottage, a place I had not been able to go last time.  It was lovely.  The gardens were just coming into bloom, and had we been there even two weeks later, I think they would have been stunning.  It is always so bizarre to be walking through those rooms and across those floors and realize that someone you read and study, someone so important like Shakespeare, was there, too.  It seems so improbable even though everybody had to live somewhere.  It just doesn't sink in, somehow, that it could actually be here, this place where you're standing at that present moment.

We went from the Cottage to lunch, and then from there on to the Birthplace.  I had been to the Birthplace before, they've done extensive renovations there, adding multimedia at the beginning, and more than ever before, it really did feel like "Shakey" Land.  It was grand, though.  They also had about a million guides inside who were very chatty.  I didn't remember that from last time.  It was nice, but it took a lot of time.

That meant that the last stop in the "park," Holy Trinity Church, was going to be a scramble in the time I had left.  But I was BY GOD GOING TO HOLY TRINITY.  I missed it on the last trip because of a kid and his meds, and this time, I was going to see the grave.  I teach that inscription every year, and to have to stand up in front of another class full of students and have to say, "Yeah....I've been there twice now, and no, I haven't seen it yet," was not going to wash with me.   One of the other teachers on the trip and I booked it across town.

It was amazing and powerfully moving.  Even though I've seen photos of it for years, I don't know.  Standing there in that space before the altar was incredible.  There is a huge bank of stained glass and five graves, one of which is Shakespeare's.  To finally see the resting place and the famous epitaph of the man who wrote all those words that make up so large a part of my life was a very personal thing to me.  It is hard to explain.  It was in many ways something like a holy moment.

Of course, I had one thing left to do....  I needed my own picture of the Black Fool that stands in the middle of town.  How could I, your very own Dancing Fool, not take a picture of that?  I was running so late that I did not have time to line up shots properly and from all the right angles.  I barely had time to point the camera and release the shutter.  I did get a couple of shots, though.  I guess that counts for something.  I really wanted to work that statue, though.  I guess that will have to wait for the next trip.

Yeah.

Right.

Ireland

We’ve seen a bit of everything so far, the ancient and picturesque and the urban and modern. In all its forms, Ireland feels very familiar to me, much more so than can be accounted for by the simple fact of my having traveled here before.

I noticed this phenomenon before. There are pieces of it that just feel like home. The area we toured around Killarney, despite its great hills and mountains, felt like Mississippi. Maybe it was the rurality of it, the farm country of it, the out-of-the-way-ness of it. Maybe it was a slant of light through the trees. I can’t explain it, but I know I felt it.

Killarney was good. I got to see things I’d already done again, revisit them, refresh old memories. We did the jaunting cars again. That was lovely. I had forgotten how nice that was. It wasn’t good before. I don’t know why. This time around, though, I could just relax and enjoy it. In the evening, I got to have a glass of Guinness, too. I haven’t had alcohol of any shape, kind, or color in five years, and although I felt this and probably won’t have any more for a long time, just having that here in Ireland where it is so much better than anywhere else was wonderful. I bought a stupid postcard today of Mona Lisa holding a pint with a foam mustache to commemorate the occasion. It’s going in my journal when I get home. Heh.

Now we’re in Dublin. For all its size, this place always feels so small. It does not feel like almost one third the population of the entire nation lives here. It does not seem possible. And then there’s the age of most of them. It’s like a giant college town. We did a walking tour today, and we started it in front of the Bank of Ireland where the Occupy Dublin movement was. There wasn’t much to it, to be brutally honest. I guess it hasn’t taken off here like it has in NYC or other places, but I just looked around at all the teenagers making out, playing hacky sack, and standing around trying to look important and cool, and thought, “Yeah. I believe it now.” Our students were a little shell shocked, I think, to look around at all the blue hair and skin-tight clothes. It was sort of funny. I kept thinking, “Oh my children. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Sure enough, as we wandered, the Six Nations Rugby match that was on let out and the Scotland and Ireland fans filled the streets headed to the pubs (or from the pubs) in various states of despair or ecstasy. Then it got really good. We got greeted, high-fived, happily jostled, and one person learned what the Scots wear under their kilts. (A question you know you should just never ask.)

Tomorrow is the part I’m waiting not-so-patiently for, Trinity College. The Claddagh I bought today to replace the one I’d damaged and Trinity College are my two big Irish things. Oxford and Stratford are my two big ones in the UK. Past that, everybody else can do whatever they like. I don’t really care. As long as I can have mine, I’m good.

Ireland Again

After a seven-hour layover in Newark, NJ, of all places, here I am again.  I'm still stuck in an airport.  We have a bit of a layover here, too, waiting on things to open and other tour groups to arrive.  Doesn't matter.  The bad part, the flights themselves, is over.  No more knees in seats.  No more people I don't know stuck way too close to me.  As much as I love to travel, I do hate to fly.

Well, of course, except for that one moment when the plane leaves the ground and suddenly you're not a part of the earthbound anymore.  That has always been and will always be magical to me.  I look for it in every flight, the time when Bernoulli's principal takes us and makes us free.  It always makes me smile.  I guess it's as close to bird-dom as I'll get.

I'm going to go find some breakfast now, take my missed pills.  I am looking forward to a wonderful day.  More bloggage to come.

(freaking) Packing

Is it wrong that I no longer even care what is in my suitcase?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I know.  I'll care lots and lots tomorrow....

Today was the longest day EVER.  I got up at the usual time (or ten minutes after the usual time, truth be told), and I haven't stopped running since.  I have produced two letters of recommendation, graded three whole sets of bonus projects, issued makeup work, refrained from destroying those who blithely danced a jig on my last good nerve, possibly imparted something useful to my classes, made a Wal-Mart and a bank run after-hours, activated international services on the bank and the cellphone so I don't get stranded with them as I have done on previous trips through my own forgetfulness that they DON'T just work when you take them to other places, did laundry after stripping off what I was wearing into the machine because it needed to go into the suitcase later tonight (sigh), and pulled out the suitcases to start the process of actually putting crap into them.

I just sat down a minute now because, basically, if I don't, I think I'm going to vaporize and blow away.  Even the dogs have stopped following me around.  They're just lying in the floor looking at me like, "Stop it.  Really.  Now.  You're making us tired."  This is from a Pit and a Pyrenees who run in circles until they drop.

Tomorrow, it will all be worth it.  Tomorrow, also, I will get to sleep for 12 hours on a plane in something like a seated position after I make human origami out of myself.  And I'm sure that whatever makes it into my suitcase, as long as my camera and at least one change of clothing are some of those things, will be sufficient unto the trip at hand.....

The Perfect Blue

I'm taking a quick break from what I'm supposed to be doing to eat a cup of lemon Greek yogurt.  I feel icky.  Maybe my blood sugar dropped.  I don't know.  It's happened twice today.  Maybe I just stayed up too late last night.  I was exceptionally reluctant to get up this morning, for sure, but that might not have had anything to do with anything other than the fact that it was a Monday.

I'm looking out the window and into a sky that makes my heart sigh.  It is that color that makes everything inside you feel as though it is being pulled irresistibly upward into the gorgeous curve of the heavens.  For a moment, all those childhood fantasies of flight we indulged in with blankets tied off around our necks don't seem so foolish after all.  It seems as if I could simply step outside, rise up on my toes, and wings would emerge at last, hidden all my life, but free now to take me back into the element in which I must naturally belong.

It is also the blue of his eyes.  Maybe this is because he has the wide open spaces I need inside him to stretch my wings.  Maybe it's because I can trust him not ever to try to make me stop flying.  I get that same feeling under the heart, that same lift-off when I look into them.  If he'll keep keep carrying the sky for me, even when there is rain, I can always soar, safe in that perfect blue.

Athena Looks at the Body of Paris

EDITED -- 3/5/12 -- added a stanza -- it's a work in progress...what can I say?


So we’ve come to this at last.

I wish I could tell you that I feel
some surprise and not see you
as just another incarnation of loss
another turning of a wheel
that has spun too many times before.

See, I knew I’d be standing here
studying your shattered perfection
the day I knocked on your door
made you the offer I’ve given
to grateful heroes and wandering kings
to semi-divine legends and epic-fodder
and you hesitated.

If I’m honest
(and I like to be)
I knew you’d turn me down
even before I laid my hand
against that which separated us.

Like so many before you
something lush and blonde
that comes just to your shoulder
wears scanty silks instead of armor
gives no clever answers
cares more about her manicure
than great mysteries
and makes war only in your bedroom
was more important to you
than anything I could give.

Your graceless futile drama has unfurled
a tattered faded flag unraveling in tempest winds
and you have had all the pleasure one could expect
of your particular pursuit.

Everything that could have been is done now.
The last of you spills across the sands
a drink offering to the deity you enthroned
one who is not now moved
could not rescue
even if she were.

Stupid, wasted, poured-out princeling.
What made you believe
that ridiculous gilded apple
was ever the thing I was trying to save?

________________________________

By me, today.  This idea won't leave me alone.  I don't even rightly know where it comes from.  There is no story about Athena coming back to Paris after the whole Trojan War is over and done with.  For some reason, though, this particular conversation, or bits of it, have been kicking around in my head for days.  I am booting it here to make it leave me alone.  Comments would be very much welcomed, even the anonymous ones.  

Coffee and Roses

Thea Gilmore.  This song.  I posted the video so you could hear it.  I'm putting the lyrics, too, so you can read along. Her voice first caught my attention through her version of "I'll Remember You" on the Chimes of Freedom compilation.  It's gorgeous.  Today, when I had my iTunes on spin-it-all, another song of hers I didn't even know I had played, and I remembered my resolution to get more of her stuff.  I got Murphy's Heart, the album on which "Coffee and Roses" appears, and although I'm only about 2/3 of the way through it, it's a good thing.  Her writing is solid, and that voice.  That tremendous voice.....
_____________________

My baby loves coffee and roses
A rebel stand and a poet’s heart
A guilty moon and suburb soldiers
Those boys can't erase the mark
My baby breaks the chain of reason
Calls the card and rolls the dice
For everything a time and season
Turning tides and breaking ice
And I will be your last call honey
Yeah I will be your downfall baby
It’s strange the way the song goes honey
We’re dancing in the wrong clothes darling.

My baby sings of old tomorrows
Spider hands September eyes
And I'm the architect of sorrow
The girl in minor key disguise
My baby leads me to the water
Wraps the sun inside his coat
And while the days are getting shorter
My baby sets the light afloat
And I will be your shadow honey
The crooked way the wind blows baby
The singing of the steel honey
The loser in the deal darling.

Yeah I will be your lover honey
Come break me under cover baby
The razor on the mirror honey
The way the smoke will clear darling
My baby loves coffee and roses
Hold the flower brown and red
The lost companion autumn shows us
My baby will not turn his head
My baby will not turn his head
My baby will not turn his head.

Listening Away

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

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

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

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

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

Paranoia

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

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

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

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

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

Little Things

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

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

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

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

Bluestocking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So He Made an Impression

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quietly

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

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

So It's Getting a Bit Ridiculous

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

The Beauty We Love

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

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

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

Nope

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

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

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

Long Night

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

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

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

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

It's Like This

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love Minus Zero/No Limit

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

_____________________________________

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

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

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

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

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

There and Back Again

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

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

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

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

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

Monkey Wrench

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

Star-Spangled Banner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Misc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheesy Does It

If I said you have a beautiful body would you hold it against me
If I swore you were an angel would you treat me like the devil tonight
If I were dying on thirst would your flowing love come quench me
If I said you have a beautiful body would you hold it against me
~ Bellamy Brothers
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I was coming home from getting a banana shake after church tonight, and as I flipped through the radio stations in my borrowed vehicle I stumbled across this old, old country song. It made me laugh. It's just so....cheesy, riddled with bad pickup lines as it is.

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

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

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

Why I Love Him

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unexpectedly

We outgrow love like other things
   And put it in the drawer,
Till it an antique fashion shows
   Like costumes grandsires wore.
~ Emily Dickinson
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My power went out today, and as I was pulling books off the shelf for something to read while I waited for the linemen to come out and figure what squirrel-accident had caused it, I laid hands on a very old Dover Thrift Edition called Great Love Poems. Since it is almost the Day That Shall Not Be Named, I sort of smiled to myself and took it down along with Pride and Prejudice, the volume I actually intended to peruse.

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

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

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

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

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

Birthday Presents

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

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

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

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

Not Funny, Twitter

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

Folding

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


Careful metallurgical examination of a Japanese sword reveals that it is composed of not one, but TWO distinctly different types of steel. It contains a soft "core", called shingane, which is made of low carbon steel. Wrapped around this is a harder "jacket" made of higher carbon steel, or kawagane. It is important to note that the finished blade is NOT a laminate, but instead consists of two separate pieces of steel which, through the forging process, have been welded together.  ~ "Blade Forging" - www.sncf.org
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As always when I suffer a setback, I have been thinking, turning things over in my mind to try to put all the pieces that had tumbled down back into their proper places again.  Predictably, everything won't go back where it was originally.  That's not always a bad thing.  Sometimes things shouldn't go back at all.  Some things need to be examined and reordered.  Some things need to be be thrown away altogether.

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

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

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

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

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