Mercy and Justice

This time of the year is complicated and emotional.  This is the reason so many people do not want to teach seniors.  I vividly remember a conversation with a veteran teacher about how much I liked teaching them.

"Nope.  Too much end-of-the-year drama," she said.  She preferred juniors, in her words still mature but with none of the drama that comes with these individuals on the cusp of leaving the sheltered environment they've been in for 12 (in some cases longer, if you count kindergarten, etc.) years.

It's true, there are moments that are tear-jerking.  And, occasionally, if one is honest, there are also moments that are infuriating.  Sometimes it becomes the last lesson I am able to impart.  So often, a decision has to be made between mercy and justice.

It's a hard thing to choose.  Which is better?  As a teacher, I am inclined toward mercy.  I think most of us are. We want to see our students successful.  We want them to be happy and complete.  The truth of it is, though, that life does not work that way all the time.  There is not a "do-over" hiding around every corner.  Everything we do shapes us for better or ill, chipping away to form the sculpture or the wreck we'll become.  Our choices are freighted with consequences, and at some point we have to learn that if we are ever going to succeed.

Every year I debate which the better tool for shaping might be. Do I do any good when I allow a second chance, or am I simply continuing a trend that has allowed the situation to develop in the first place?  Is it time for a harsh lesson that might hurt now but might save pain down the road?   I suppose it goes on a case-by-case basis.  It's not the best part of what I do by a long shot, but it here it is.  I only hope I can be wise enough to do the right thing.

Every teacher faces these decisions on a daily basis, of course.  It just seems that never are they so poignant as now.  Even though I know that where the student ultimately winds up really has very little to do with me and is based on decisions he or she has made for at least the time they are with me, this is still a difficult time.

A Million Little Things

Today was one of those days where I run around and around in tiny little circles until I fall down.  I often feel like a flock of very aggressive birds is following me around squawking and pecking at me on days like this.  There is the urge to throw my hands up and shout, "Go away!"  It can get sort of Hitchcockian at times when I'm trying to schedule an induction, chase down candidates and officers, process exams, deal with student/departmental crises, eat lunch, AND make parent calls.  Oh, and all that?  That's the short list.

It's just that way sometimes, and it's usually that way at the end of the school year.  It never ceases to amaze me how many things wait until the end to begin.  (Paradox?  You'd think so, but sadly and oddly, no...)  I took care of those, and then there were the genuine crises, the moments of human drama, the regular daily tasks, the grading (Good God, there is ALWAYS the grading), and at some point, I grabbed a salad.  It was good.  There were mandarin oranges involved.

It wasn't a bad day.  It was just hectic.  Hopefully, because it WAS hectic, tomorrow won't be quite as circusy.  Of course, there will still be the grading (because, well, I think there has to be to keep gravity going and the Earth going around the sun, etc.), and I am sure that because I work at a high school at least a small slice of drama will find its way under my door at some point.  Again, this seems to be one of the foundational laws of the universe.  If you are currently drama-free wherever you are, that's because we have it all.  I can box some up and ship it if you feel the lack.....

I did have a totally unexpected and very pleasant experience at the end of the day:  I left before 4:30.  I finished up everything that needed doing urgently, cleaned up in my room long enough for buses and mad drivers to clear campus, took the laptop cart down to storage for the last time this year, hung an award a group I sponsor had won the other night, stood looking around my room in the afternoon sunlight for a moment, and felt that peace that comes from having done all the damage you can do to something for one good day.  I shut down all the electronics, switched off my little owl Scentsy warmer that C. gave me, grabbed up my bags, and slid out the door.  I was home eating dinner with my family by 5 and back to my own house by 6.  I can't tell you when the last time that happened even was.

Changing tides, changing routines.  If I have to hack my way through a few more of these "jungle days" to get to more of these easy afternoons, then fine by me.  It's worth it.

Grey Blur

Coming home on the interstate today, I saw the grey Charger sidle into traffic from the on-ramp.  From the way all the vehicles in front of me reacted, even though I was just too far away to see the stripes and decals, I knew it was a State Trooper.

We were in the precious three lane space just outside town, a free-for-all zone in which you will see everybody's inner race driver come out on even the best of days.  I watched that dark grey backend slide over to the left and drop slightly. I sighed. I could just imagine what was coming next. Sure enough, seconds later, it shot for the horizon in a lane that was clearing like magic in front of it.

Don't you know it must feel righteously good to take that big interceptor out, put it in the overtake lane, and punch it?  To hear that big hemi's throaty rumble, to feel that incredible surge of power hit, and to ride that wave with no fear because you ARE the limiting factor and it's all good with you?

I do love power and speed.  Granted, right now, I have precious little of it, but I respect it when I see it.  Someday.  Someday.....

Google Play and Google Drive

I stumbled across an article on Lifehacker that led me to another article on Lifehacker (I swear, it's like a maze, and at some point, you will wind up on something that references binder clips....) that dumped me on a page that was talking about Google Play.  I had probably seen it at some point when it was introduced, but I didn't really pay much attention to it, since it is aimed at Android users (and I'm not one) and tablet folk (not me, either, yet).  As usual when one reads something on LH, though, the "duh moment" occurred, and I began to see a whole other universe of uses for Google Play.

So far, I've looked at a couple of streaming music services, and they're fine.  Spotify is fairly nifty, and Pandora is okay.  In fact, I owe Pandora for a couple of artists I really like.  I enjoy it for discovering new folks.  Spotify, if I were looking to pay people for a service (which I'm not.  I'm poor like that, see?) would be great on my iPhone.  I only use the streaming stuff on my iPhone more or less.  (Well, and Pandora through my Roku, but that's a different conversation.)

What I've always dreamed of is having all my music on my iPhone.  I change music moods constantly, and I have very diverse listening tastes.  My library isn't as big as some people's I know, but it isn't exactly tiny, either. That's a crapload of GB on an iPhone that won't hold all that and my pictures and my apps and my...  You get it.  Enter the everlovin' Cloud.

I am, even as we speak, uploading all my music to Google's cloud through Play.  It is going to take about fifty years, probably since my connection on this DSL is CRAP, but it will get there.  I already have access to more music online than I do on my phone.  Granted, there are restrictions (a live internet connection), but when I have it, I have all my music and my playlists everywhere.  It makes good sense for me to use Google for this, too, because although I am not an Android user, I am a hardcore Google user everywhere else.   This is a very good thing.

I added the gmusic app from the iTunes app store (since Apple and Google can't play nice together and required a third party) and this was really the only missing piece.  There is a native web interface from Google, but without the gmusic app, Google Play won't play in the background, and getting to playlists, etc., is a bit clunky.  The only complaint I've had so far with any of it is that my iHome dock seemed weirded out by it in a way that it never is by iTunes.  This is a very, very minor thing, and, I think, a compatibility issue with the gmusic app, not with Google Play itself since I ran them both on the sleep timer and it turned off the native web interface fine but couldn't kill the app...  O_o  Lesson learned there.

Added to all this wonderfulness is that I have Google Drive now.  It's basically just Dropbox by Google, but because it's by Google, it seamlessly integrates with everything else by them I use (which is everything) making my life worlds easier.  I love them. This is it.  This is the dream come true.  All my stuff everywhere without having to carry around a huge laptop of doom.  I don't have all my documents in my Google Drive folder, but I keep the ones that are important and needed there.

The feeling of knowing that I can pull them up on my phone and send them to whomever or share them with others through Google Docs while I'm sitting in a waiting room somewhere or in a meeting instead of having to wait until later (or in my case, possibly forget...damn you, Topamax) is extremely comforting.  When John Q. Student has a crisis (and can't get into the Docs locker) and needs PowerPoint  or handout X to resolve it, I can tap, send, and we can all be a little happier.  This is a good thing.

I know there are people out there who hate Google.  Well, that's okay.  To each his own.  They are making my life a whole lot easier, and I'm grateful to them for it.  If other people want other solutions, fine.  Spiffy.  Corking.  The only thing I guess I have to say is from the Rolling Stones then..."Hey, you, get off of my Cloud...."  Because you know what?  Right now, it's working fine for me.

A Good Sign

“This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”
~ Elizabeth Gilbert
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I found this quote on Tumblr today, and it made me think.  Is it?  Is it really a good sign?

I do have a broken heart right now.  So many important things have fallen apart on me, and I have no way to fix them.  In my crafting/art life, I've found that when you need to make a bond between something that is fragile or heavy that's been damaged, pottery, porcelain, glass, you need adhesive on both sides of the break.  The glue on both sides fuses together to mend what's broken.  Right now, in the situation that is bothering me worst, I can tell you for certain that there's no interest in mending on the other side, so I guess all the pieces will continue to lie on the floor, sharp shards that will keep cutting me every time I pass.

As teachers, we are not supposed to have favorites.  It happens, though, whether we want it to or not.  Certain students are more compatible with our own personalities, give more in class, connect with our subject area.  To borrow the cliche, it is what it is.  Some kids just get to you.

That can be a great blessing or a great curse.  This year, it's been both.  I've had two classes that have kept me in stitches, been the highlights of my day.  Not everything has been roses and candy, of course.  It's school.  I teach.  Things happen.  For the most part, though, we've rocked along, up, down, good days and bad, but going about the business of getting the education done.

Then, right at the very end of the year, the wheels came off with one of the ones who has been one of my best.  It arose suddenly, like all storms do.  It was totally surreal to the point of me asking if it was some kind of joke in poor taste.  The revelation of it all hurt.  I did not then and cannot now understand it.  Every time I think about the fact that things are ending this way, though, I feel sick and old and tired.  And disappointed.  And disillusioned.  And foolish.  And I don't want to do this anymore.

I suppose it bothers me most because I perceived it all so totally wrong.   The individual in question had been such a source of joy for me.  Usually, my instincts are fairly reliable.  To have misread this so completely, to have misunderstood so much makes me unable to trust them at all, though.  If I've been wrong about this, then, what else has to be questioned?  Basically, everything.

So no.  I don't think it's a good sign to have a broken heart.  I don't think it's a glorious sign of great adventure. I just think it means that you did something stupid, put yourself in harm's way somehow and got smacked for your troubles, and, like any other pain, it's your survival instinct's way of telling you, "Congratulations.  You've survived.  Probably.  Let's not do that again."

I can't help but wish, though, that before it all is said and done that it could be mended.  I do not think that it will be.

Stuff Imma Do This Summer

(fo' sho)

• Read Don Quixote (in English) (again) (because of a t-shirt from Out of Print).  Sigh.  I've read it once in Spanish, but it was a million years ago, and I can't remember if we did all of it or only excerpts.  Anyway, I don't know if my español is quite up to doing the whole 900+ pages in its native tongue again, so I'm taking the chicken route and going with an English translation.  I fully acknowledge my weakness. I own it and am okay.  
• Get inked.  I have the quote (from Dylan).  I have the symbol (yeah, bird/wings/flying away related).  I have a word in Latin even. Complicated as hell and full of symbolism. I just have to find somewhere to get it done.  I would not say no to someone to hold my hand and distract me from the fact that kittens don't lick them on. (five points to you if you catch that joke)
• See Brazil.  Boo.  Yah.
• Clean a ton of crap out of this house.  As in back a truck up and shovel unnecessary items into it and drive it away from here in a random direction.  I am SO TIRED of things I do not need, want, or use being a constant source of clutter and stress.  Get thee hence, evil crap.
• Build a mystery.  Or at least get ready to study several.  New classes start next year for me.  Gotta prep curriculum.  Fun.  I'm not being sarcastic.  Really.  I freaking love this stuff.
• Go one place in-state on my cool places list and shoot a bunch of pics.  I don't know where yet, but I'm thinking of the Delta this year.  I'd love some company; these trips are always better with a friend, but I know that gets complicated, and if I have to go alone, well, those trips are profound, too.  I will go, though.  

This is my "to-do" list.  Everything else is optional.  These things are on.  If you want to help or ride along, you can let me know.

A Good Man

Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
~"Holding Out for a Hero" - Bonnie Tyler
______________________________

Driving home today after a very long day in a very long week, I saw somebody I knew.  I'm not sure if he was ending his day or if he was still in the midst of his.  We waved at each other in passing and continued on our separate journeys. He looked so tired there behind the wheel.

He has enough reason.  He's a good man, but he has too much going on right now.  Most of it was caused by a bad woman.  Everything that was settled is uprooted.  Through no fault of his own, all that was whole is broken.  It would make anyone tired.

He's not the first good man I've seen in a situation of that kind.  It struck me as I drove on home that on behalf of all of us women who seem to have so many problems finding any good men at all that perhaps some of us ought to posse up and go take those misusing and abusing the limited resources available behind a building somewhere and beat the everliving crap out of them.  You know.  Put the rabid dogs down before they tear out another throat, savage somebody else past recognition or reclamation.

Maybe the good men (if indeed there are more than one or two out there) could police their own, too, an act of reciprocation.  Based upon my experiences, they have the nastier, heftier job since it seems like so much of their population has been infected with the jackass syndrome.  Or maybe it's just the section into which I keep running....

Alternately, I suppose we could just quarantine the elements that are offensive and damaging from both camps and ship them off somewhere where they will only claw at each other.  This might work as a solution, too.  Maybe we could create an Island of Defective Assery somewhere and put all these people on it.  The only problem I see with this is that they will inevitably breed, and no child should have to suffer in their care.  Too many already do.  This is why it's better if we just drag them out behind the buildings....

Just a thought.  Consider it something Swiftian that overtook me. Take it with the requisite grain of salt and file it as you will.

Yesterday, I...

(a list)

• fought through the remnants of a killer migraine from the day before and staggered to the shower.  Almost fell down two or three times.  Managed to get clean and not throw up.  Considered this to be a victory worthy of its own epic. 
• decided not to call for a sub.  
• probably put on all my clothing in the right order and didn't forget any of the basic steps in self-preparation for a day with other people.  
• hauled approximately 800 lbs of stuff approximately 5 miles on foot to set up a mini-buffet for my AP kids.
• graded at least a half a class of research papers.  If you've never done this, you just really don't understand what that means.
• wanted to weep because of the same.
• felt like my head was going to rip open like an overripe fruit every time I moved too fast, bent over, or sneezed.  This also included turning my head to either side to look over my shoulder.  I appear to have internal brain bruising (is this even POSSIBLE????) from my migraine.  I don't know, but even now, it's still a little tender.  CHEEZUS.
• attended a meeting during my planning period regarding Summer Reading.
• wanted to weep because of the same.
• took another Maxalt.
• had dueling movies going in my classroom (Dead Poets' Society & Star Wars).
• created, printed, administered, and graded a comprehensive final for my Comp I class.
• graded almost all of the final essays for my Comp I class, all of which were turned in last night.
• stayed over for and attended Senior Awards Night.
• watched all get some and some (very deserving) get all. 
• managed to drag myself home again, stay upright long enough to eat cold pizza, and fall down.

So, what did you do?

What Fresh Hell Is This?

I was talking with a friend yesterday, and something that I thought was dead and buried clawed its way to the surface with all the tenacity of any zombie in any B-grade horror movie you've ever seen.  It was a nasty comment (or so I thought at the time) that somebody made last year about someone dear to me.  I shot it down fairly ruthlessly at the time, convinced it could not be true.

Don't you just hate it when you stand for someone and then you have to feel like a fool later?  That's happened to me twice lately....

Cazzo.

I very clearly remember the conversation I had with that person where they told me this particular thing wasn't true. Well, to be fair, what they said was, they "didn't know where that came from."  Subtly elusive wording? That, apparently, didn't make it not-real.  There are no words to unspeak our actions.   It's not a question of this one said/that one said now.  It's a question of a cat being so far out of that bag that we'll never see it again.  

Here's the thing.  The original situation?  That would have bothered me, probably, it's true.  It wouldn't, however, have been even anything like the first time I'd seen that. Would I have been disappointed?  Yes, some.  I can't help it.  I don't like watching people I care for do stupid things.  It happens.  It makes me sad, makes me worry.  I get over it, though.   Does it compare with knowing that I've been lied to? A thousand times no.

I don't know what to do now.  My first and strongest instinct is flight.  If ever I wanted wings, that time is now. I'm sorting it out in my head the best I can.  This is coming right on the heels of the other, and so I'm more sensitive to it, perhaps, than I would have been at any other time.

I wish I didn't know.  I wish there was nothing to know.  My other friend did me no favors.  Neither of them has, the one who told me the truth or the one who lied to start with.

Get Your Language....Here

I just added the Google Translate dropdown menu gadget to the blog.  It will put all the wonder that is here into  50 or more different languages.  Knock yourself out.  I know this makes your life complete now.  You're welcome.

Two Songs I Probably Shouldn't Like (But I Do)

Of all the apps on my iPhone, I think I use Shazam and Instagram more than any of the others.  It's just possible that this classifies me as a hipster, something I try really hard not to think about since I really, really, really hate that term/the whole ideology of it.  I say as I'm wearing one of my clever tshirts.  Sigh.  If  all of it does, well....vaffanculo.  (I'm working on my obscenities in other languages now.  Italian and Spanish are especially satisfying for some reason.)  I am still going to enjoy it anyway.

Which brings me to my next point.

I was going through my song tags, and I found one I'd done quite awhile ago for a version of "99 Problems" by Hugo.  I listened to the clip again, and I decided that, yes, I did indeed have to have that song.  I don't remember if I tagged it while I was watching the dreadful remake of Fright Night in which it appears or one day when I (seem to) remember it being on the radio when I was in a really bad mood after a confrontation with somebody and it just seemed to FIT.  I should not like this song.  The language in it should irritate me.  But I do.  I really, really do.  And there are days when I want to put it in a giant 1980s boom box, travel to the place where whoever it is that is irritating me is (if they are of the feminine persuasion...and possibly if they are not), press play, and POINT.  "99 problems and..."  YOU'RE NOT ONE. Press stop. Walk away.  This is not exactly what the song lyrics were intended to convey, I know.  They were all "male independence, no woman is going to get me down," blah, blah, blah.  Call it literary interpretation.

When I went to download the mp3, I looked at the entire album by Hugo to see what, if anything, else might be on it that I might like.  I hadn't really heard anything by him, so I wanted to explore before I made the decision concerning getting only the single or the whole album.  As I listened to the samples, there were several that I liked, enough to get me to purchase the album, but one other stood out from all the rest.

One of the reviewers on Amazon called "Butter and Bread" "pure sex."  He wasn't kidding.  The opening lines are "She tastes like midnight/she tastes like wine/ (repeat)/gonna run my fingers all down her spine." And it just goes from there.  It's pure blues nasty, and I've got it stuck in my mind.  I love this song.  I need to find a guy who could have this attitude and keep him for blues reasons. (And if you don't know what blues reasons are, you probably shouldn't ever read my blog.  Ever.  Run.  Now.  And I'm sorry for the damage I've done you by reading this far....)  Technically, this might be another one of those songs I should eschew, but it makes me grin, and if that's wrong, well, again, I guess I'll be breaking out another one of my linguistic toys.

Maybe it's the unusual moon.  Maybe it's the end of a rough-as-sandpaper year.  Maybe it's coming off all the Topamax and waking up again.  Maybe I'm always like this. I don't know.  I guess I just currently find myself in the mood for things that are not delicate or polite.  Tomorrow, I may be back in the mode for social satire, tea, crumpets, and Jane Austen, but just now, I believe I'm more in a phase where it's going to have to be something a little less refined.

SuperMoon

I just got back home from, for lack of a better term, viewing the "supermoon."  I got Chewie into the car, and the two of us made an adventure out of it.  We got fast food at Sonic, something he's never done before, and except for a little barking at random things in the parking lot and a LOT of white dog hair in the back seat of my car, he was very good.  I bought him a plain kids' burger all of his own, and off we went.

We got to our place out in the country just before dusk, and Chewie and I ate.  The evening was lovely and quiet, only the distant and disturbing sound of a very large pack of coyotes breaking the whippoorwill and bobwhites' song.  Chewie explored his new surroundings, and I waited for the moon to make its entrance.  When it did, it was fantastically lovely.  Just after the sun dropped behind the horizon, the moon appeared through the treeline, gold and gigantic.

For a time, I just sat watching it ascend, listening to the night birds, noticing the random flickering of early lightning bugs like the last few pieces of glitter someone had dusted off his hands.  When the moon had risen sufficiently, I gathered my camera, left the porch, and wandered out into the pasture proper.

It was bright enough to see the settings on my camera without having to use any other source of light.  For all that, though, most of the pictures I took still won't turn out well.  I needed a tripod, and predictably, I left mine at home by accident.  It doesn't really matter.  I had what I wanted out of the evening sitting on the porch listening to the silence and watching the world turned silver.

When I got Chewie and me home, I started messing around in iTunes, and I was struck with the random notion to pull together a few songs that have "moon" somewhere in the title for tonight.  Then I noticed how many songs I have that have moon somewhere in the title.  A quick search of my library yielded 18 songs, almost an hour's worth of music, from exceptionally diverse genres.  I'm listening to the compiled playlist now and getting ready to try to finish a book I started yesterday.  Not a bad way, all in all, to have spent an evening.

Forgiveness

The weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.  ~Mahatma Gandhi

________________________________________________

Yesterday morning on my way to work, I started thinking about recent events.  The situation that has been bothering me so involved a personal offense, something somebody else did to me.  I considered the possible paths in dealing with it.  As I saw it, there were only two.

First, I could choose to hang on to the feeling of hurt.  I could continue to be angry about the offense and keep the wound of it inside me open and bleeding.  I could keep treating the person involved with suspicion and all the other negative side-effects that spill out of the type of thing that happened, which no doubt would cause a chain of badness to cascade forth on that side as well.

Or there was the other way.  I could choose to forgive it.  My immediate reaction after thinking this was, “No.  Not this time.  I’m done just letting crap go.  That’s weak and it solves nothing.  It’s not a solution; it’s avoidance.”  And maybe there’s something to be said for that.  In my opinion, some people take far too much without protest.  They tuck away every hurt, maybe because they don’t think they have the right to say anything or maybe because they erroneously believe it’s the best way to keep the peace, and then one day, they explode.  The total denial of their own needs, their own personhood is destructive and unhealthy.  This type of “forgiveness” is not what I’m talking about, though.

This morning, I really thought about what it means to forgive somebody for possibly the first time ever.  When it is truly done correctly, it’s not passive-aggressive avoidance.  I think it is the opposite.  It seems to me that it is a choosing of the person over the issue.  When somebody hurts you, you have to decide which is more important to you, the one who gave the injury or the point over which they wounded you.

Forgiveness is not about being weak and letting things go, about letting people run over you.  It means you decide that the individual matters more than the individual mistake.  It’s about saying that you feel that a relationship, a thing made of many actions, is more valuable than an offense, an action which even though it may have huge consequences is still only one incident.  It actually requires a great deal of strength because you have to focus not on the thing which causes pain, that most recent encounter with that person usually, but on the entirety of them.  This is acknowledging, too, that is frequently much more satisfying to hold on to the bruised heart and wail, point fingers and plot revenge.

Ultimately, if forgiveness is not given then I think it probably hurts me much more than it hurts anybody else.  It’s just a sharp shard of glass I’m holding in my hand and squeezing until the blood flows, opening and closing my fingers around it again and again every time I think about the wrong that’s been done me.  It’s much better to put that down and just get on with getting over it.  That isn’t a simple or easy thing, and I don’t mean to diminish it or the time it can take for the negative effects of actions to dissipate despite the best of intentions to forgive in the world.

Yesterday after I made that choice, I saw the source of my personal conundrum.  I had already decided that the person was worth more to me than the problem, and although our encounter was brief, I addressed him with that attitude.   Today, I saw him again.  While I don’t know that I will ever feel the way I once did about that person, because let’s face it, although the childhood nicety is “forgive and forget,” the latter is just not actually possible, I did choose to deal with him according to my new philosophy.  It was much more pleasant for me.  I could not possibly speak as to what it might have been on his side of the equation.  He will have to be responsible for that himself.

Uneasy Mind

Horrible nightmares all night last night drive me back here to clear the cobwebs away.  I dreamed somebody I knew was choking me to death with a noose made of white cotton cord.  I knew the voice, but I couldn't see the face.  I couldn't fight or get away, and he kept telling me over and over that it was for my own good...it would be better when he was done.  The details were and still are horridly vivid.

I didn't get a lot of rest, needless to say.

I guess that dream and all the other crap that came along with it are just the products of my uneasy mind turning over the rocks and peering into the darkness beneath them.  I read several things online about dying in dreams and what that might mean because I always thought you weren't supposed to do that.  Apparently it's fairly common and could indicate a handful of very predictable things: feeling trapped in a situation, big changes coming, unresolved conflict with a person, etc. The ways the mind chooses to send messages to itself, encode meaning, sneak around behind its own back surreptitiously are vast, I suppose. It is a hideously unfunny hack scriptwriter with a flair for the melodramatic. If it can't just be straightforward, I wish it would put up a screensaver of a pretty meadow with sunshine and flowers while it's doing whatever it is it has to do and let me get a little sleep.

Away

I'd like to get out of here.  Really away.  Maybe for a couple of weeks.  Maybe for a couple of years.  I have that feeling that it's time to go, and I can't quite seem to get up the inertia to break free permanently.  I am going to have to take my freedoms where I can, then.

It's such a paradox.  I still love what I do, but some of the things and people that were bright spots, great joys to me, have become tarnished now, and I just want to close the door on them, not have to deal with it anymore.  There is no resolution of the situation possible, so leaving it behind is a solution I can choose until I can toughen myself up to a point where I just don't care.

And with that comes so many other things I want to strip away.  It's like drops of ink on soft paper, and I find myself wanting to cut away every place the stain has spread.  Although I frequently say this and then turn around and blog incessantly, it is likely you will see less here in the near future.  I just don't feel that I have that much to say, and the electronic world is one of those things I feel the need to pare back right now.

I'm sure this is just a cycle brought about by the stress of a long year ending and the drama/bullshit of last week most especially, but I am going to run with it.  If it's what I feel I need right now, then so be it.  I'll see you around whenever I feel like there's something useful to say again.

When Life Is Like a Country Song....

Lied to, cheated, and generally messed around.  By multiple individuals.  Yeah.  That pretty much sums up the week I've had.

Forget this noise.

What hurts the most, I think is that one of the people involved in writing the lyrics of this week, if you will, to stretch the metaphor, is somebody that I was truly fond of and respected.  Now what the hell am I supposed to do with that?  Oh, I am quite sure, based upon the behavior involved, that it does not matter on the other side of the equation.  What do I do with my own disillusionment?  How can I continue to look that person in the eyes now that faith has been broken?  Most especially since I know it does NOT matter on the other side of the equation?

It's not just happening in my little universe, either.  The things I see people doing to each other all around me are insane.  It's like somebody turned a psych ward out and all the crazy people are loose and ravening for blood. (So maybe this is a Pink Floyd song instead....)  In both my professional and my private settings, there are horror stories of actions that have made me sit and stare or laugh incredulously because what else can you do?  Cry maybe?  It's happening everywhere.  Everywhere.

 The vast majority of individuals seem to think that as long as they want to do it and nobody is there to stop them from it forcibly, it's fine-and-jim-dandy to proceed with any action whatsoever. The only rule to be respected is rule of brute force.  "If you can't make me NOT do it, then get out of my way."  Shakespeare might have said it as, "The weakest go to the wall."

What gives people the idea that they have the right to be utterly horrible as if it is some sort of birthright? If somebody treated them with half the disdain, half the lack of respect and basic kindness ONCE that they casually dish out on a regular basis, they would fold up like wet paper dolls and disappear. They would run crying to mama, scream of injustice to the heavens, expect better treatment immediately.

By God, if you expect to get it yourself, you should give it in return.  In fact, step out and offer it first.    Otherwise, when the insanity comes around hunting for its little taste of you, and it will, oh, it will, do not be surprised when hands are not lifted to soothe or save.  Life has teeth and claws and applies them indiscriminately.  If we don't all hold each other up, help each other bandage the wounds it leaves, none of us have a chance.

A Moment of Ultimate Disambiguation

I'm not calling you a liar, just don't lie to me. ~ Florence + The Machine

______________________________________________

For some time now, I've had this question, this uncertainty that has troubled me about something.  Last night, in the most unarguable way, it was cleared up.  Today, I will have to deal with it.

It's not going to be pleasant or easy.  The moment of finding out was hurtful to a degree and disappointing.  At least I know, though.  There is no longer that nagging sense of questioning and doubt.  Confirmation, even in the negative, is solid ground to push off from.

The issue, something utterly ridiculous, turned serious.  That happens.  However, it has also highlighted something much deeper for me.  It has begun to make me reevaluate several fundamental policies, practices, and habits.  While the choices that created the problem were not mine, I will take steps in the future to ensure the fallout won't affect me again.  That means better bulwarks, bigger earthenworks, more separations, more reserve and distance.  Time to build those walls thicker and step farther back.  Those slings and arrows can't reach you if get out of their range. I'm sure I'm going to have to "slap my hands" mentally several times, but in light of what I've learned and other recent events, I think it's time to go back to the first and greatest defenses:  isolation and expectation of treachery.

Holy Freaking Crap

It has been the sort of day that began with a dead hair dryer and ended with watching a guy getting stalked in the Wal-Mart parking lot by a county sheriff in a Dodge Charger and subsequently arrested. You ever have that kind of day?

I broke up fights between people I never would have expected to quarrel mildly over issues that I never would have expected even to exist in this universe (or six parallel ones).  I got told I couldn't be "shawty-bread" because I was too big.  (Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I have a hand-gesture for you...)  I tried to restore peace and harmony to the universe.  I taught Sylvia Plath.  I tried to respect all persons and viewpoints, treat all as I would want to be treated, jump to no conclusions.  I had no Diet Mountain Dew or caffeine of any kind to do it.  That we all survived is a frakkin' miracle.  I kept waiting for some TV fool to jump out of a turning of the hallways and tell me I was being "punked."

After it was all over, I went to Wal-Mart, replaced the hair dryer, bought a LOT of Diet Mountain Dew, got something fantastic for dinner (eggplant parm I didn't have to slave over a stove to eat), and shamelessly threw an entire package of red velvet mini-cupcakes into the cart as well.  Tomorrow had damn well better be completely, totally, and utterly drama-free.  Just in case it isn't, though, at least I will be going in armed.

Resolve

It's still and quiet, just the sound of the heat running and the fan of the laptop breaking the morning calm.  I slept hard and deep last night, dreamed a sea of strange things that have subsided uneasily like big ships going down under dark waves.  I've eaten breakfast, what of it sounded tolerable, Nutella on wheat bread, Diet Mountain Dew, my old standbys, and now I am getting ready to face the day.

For a long time after the alarm went off, I debated as to whether or not I should just take the day.  I lay there looking at the minutes click over one after the other, chasing across the digital read-out on my alarm clock.  Then I got up and made my way to the shower.  There is no reason to put off until tomorrow what needs to be done today.

What can be salvaged has to be salvaged.  What needs to be cleared away, must be.  It's the morning to live up to last night's resolve, to start looking for the good.  How grand it would be if it came out to meet me....

Stealing Joy

Today was a mixture of things.  What should have been a day filled with nothing but light-hearted silliness wound up in so many ways ripping the heart right out of me.  My disappointment with things and the subsequent stress triggered a migraine worse than anything I've had in a long, long time.  I took a Maxalt that didn't work, came home, crawled into the bed, and became unconscious for several hours.

I'm tired of this.

I have to start choosing not to let things (and people) steal my joy.  I said today was a mixture of things.  Not all those things were bad.  Not all those people were apathetic.  Not even the majority of them were.  I need to cut loose the ones who were and just be done with it.  No matter how much I wish they were otherwise, no matter how much I used to think of them, no matter how much I really wanted them to be something other than this, they make their choices, too.  I can't make them care.  I have to stop letting them steal my joy.

I have to trim away that which is already dead and let it go.  I've never had to say this, never had to feel this way, but it is my reality now, and I need to face it.  I have to focus on the good.  And, fortunately, if I will start doing that, there is a lot of good to look at.  Everything is not bad.  Everyone is not tuned out, packed up, ready to go.

So here's my resolution.  I'm done making myself sick with despair and frustration when the ones I'm doing it for couldn't possibly care less if they could be bothered to try.  I am going to focus on the ones who sparkle and shine, who give me what they have every day when they show up, who bring joy in with them.  They deserve that from me.

As for the others, this is me officially shaking the dust off my sandals and turning my face in another direction.  I'm walking toward a place where my head doesn't pound at the end of the day.  I'm walking toward a place where I'm back about the business of doing what it is I do.  The joy thieves can either join me there or not.  It is, after all, their choice and always has been.

Get. Out.

I'm having very weird dreams again.  D. is in them.  I haven't dreamed about D. or even thought about him, really, in ages.  What is dragging that corpse up now?  He's sitting in every dream I have, though, smug, smiling that same old smile, dispensing his own personal brand of concern and advice, even though I don't want to hear it even in dreamland.  I'm going to assume it's the Topamax dosage change dredging up deeply buried layers of crapola and hope that he goes away again soon.  I cannot imagine why else I would possibly have him in my head.  It is not comfortable for him to be there.  It just NEVER ends.

I uploaded a great many of my poems, etc., to my Google Docs locker today as an extra measure of storage/backup, and also as a means to facilitate sharing them with a couple of people on occasion for this and that.  As I did so, I was weeding through them, rereading them, and it struck me again how long its been since I really sat down and wrote consistently.  I am hoping very much that this summer, for a variety of reasons, will mark a turning point in that pattern.  One, hopefully I won't be exhausted all the time.  Two, I will be travelling, and I always write better when I am.  Three, I will have a little time to produce.  Maybe that happy combination will break the lock of silence that has been sitting so heavily on my Muse.  The few things I've produced over the last year or so have not been terrible, but....

It's late and tomorrow will come early.  There is probably more to say, but for now, I'm headed off to the land of dreams and pray there are no ghosts from my past waiting on me there.

Coincidences and Roller Coaster Rides

I stepped down the Maxalt again last night.  100mg per night now for a month.  In one of the odd coincidences that fill my life, NPR emailed me this article about migraines and women last night, too.

I read it with great interest.  I learned several things I didn't know.  My headaches start in the visual center of the brain.  That explains why everything starts to look funny, why I see the halos, and once why I saw that thing that wasn't even there.  I am also not imagining that it destroys my ability to speak and deal with words.  That's documented.  It's so strong with me, though.  It screws with my language more than any other thing.  I still would like to know why that aspect is dominant with me, why I have less of the pain that puts some people in the hospital and become a blithering idiot instead.

The article calls it an electrical wave pulsing through the brain.  It seems, from the description, to be like a tidal wave crashing over every structure in its path, flowing over the landscape with deliberate purpose, causing symptom after symptom as it spreads.

The most disturbing thing from the article was that this study seemed to indicate that like a tidal wave the damage a migraine leaves behind is permanent.  Apparently, the more of them a person has, the more prone to having them a person is likely to be.  It's almost like that big wave wears a path through.  Maybe a fault in the wiring is the better metaphor after all?

The UCLA researcher's comments about needing to control how often they strike and how early to avoid changes in the structure of the brain disturbed me.  I have had a lot, and I do mean a LOT, of migraines, especially before they got me on the Topamax.  At one point, I was having as many as three a week.  What does that mean for the structure of my brain?  What has changed?  How would I know?  Does it matter?  I know that a thing I can't really do anything about is something I should lay aside, but I can't say it didn't give me pause, especially now that I'm coming off the Topamax, thinking about what an "acceptable" number of headaches might be.

Something that was no mystery at all is why they think more women have them than men:  hormones.  Well, duh.  I don't know why that was of scientific interest at all.  Didn't they already know this?  Or, if not, couldn't plain common sense have told them this?  I'm sorry, but how can a medically-trained person possibly not have understood the havoc that a woman's hormones wreak on her body every month?   The power of that chemistry running around inside us?  Maybe it's because so much of the medical science is being done by people who have never had to experience that.  They denigrate what they do not have to deal with.  It would be good if once, just once, all those male scientists could ride that roller coaster and understand it.

Broken-Souled

After a day filled with crudeness and cruelty, I am waiting for the moment when I can run.  Today has been a thing woven from the fibers of hell. What they don't tell you that you don't always have the option to run from or fight the most vicious predators.  Sometimes, horribly, you just have to sit there and let them take their mouthful out of your heart and watch your own blood run from between their gaping grinning teeth..... There goes the last trumpet.  I am going to take whatever feathers remain and fly out of here, broken-souled as I am.

Found Today on Poetry.Org

from One Hundred Quatrains BY PATRIZIA VALDUGA

TRANSLATED BY GEOFFREY BROCK

8

By now you know: I need the words.
You'll learn to give me what I seek.
It's my sick mind, it feeds on words.
I'm begging you, for God's sake: speak!

17

Hurry, pin my wrists in place,
nail me to your bed like Christ . . .
comfort me, caress my face . . .
fuck me when I expect it least.

__________________________________

My God.  Talk about something that hits like a hammer....I would like to see the rest of these, I think.   Wow.  I have never read anything by Valduga before, but I will find more now.

Late Night Grand Hotel

And maybe you were thinkin'
That you thought you knew me well
But, no one ever knows the heart of anyone else
I feel like Garbo in this late night grand hotel
Cause living alone is all I've ever done well

~ "Late Night Grand Hotel" - Nanci Griffith

_________________________________

I'm not sure I should listen to some music when I'm tired like this.  It makes me want things the universe seems to have decided are not for me.  Take right now, for instance.  "Love at the Five and Dime" is spinning.  It is one of the loveliest songs I know, so sweet and hopeful that it makes everything in my heart that longs to be loved sigh.  It is a perfect song.  I will sing with it.  I won't be able to help myself.  Nobody can, I think.  

This whole playlist is sort of a minefield.  I like all the artists I have in it, but I rarely play it, and now I remember why.  There are songs that make me want to slap all the men I know ("Pretend Love") just for being the same gender as the singer.  There are songs that make me all teary-eyed and girl ("Home Within Your Heart," "Love at the Five and Dime").  And then there are the songs I want for myself.

I want somebody to sing them to me, for me, callused hands sure and supple on a Martin.  I want them to be personal promises, not just an indifferent playlist randomly generated by my having dumped artists I like together and pressed "play."  I want them tailored to me and him.  I want "Long Shadows" and "You Move Me."  I want "Mama, You've Been on My Mind" and "I'm the Man Who Loves You."  I covet them.  I crave them like a delicacy, like a basic sustenance long denied.  

The truth of it is, though, for whatever reason I seems I became hard to love somewhere along the way.  It wasn't on purpose, I assure you.  Because of it, though, I don't get these songs except when they spin through iTunes.  I have no troubadours anymore, not for a long time now, no beautiful guitar guys, no singers of songs.  Instead, my life is much more like "Late Night Grand Hotel."  

And maybe that's appropriate, too.  Maybe that's just the other side of the coin.  Maybe you can't want one without having personal experience of the other.  It's just that I am so tired of being good at the living alone part.  I would very much like to have some of the other for awhile, even if it turns out that perhaps I am not very good at it.

It Flies...

...but not necessarily when you're having fun.

The past couple of days have moved super fast.  Maybe that's because I have barely sat down in them.  I've had a couple of things I've thought, "Wow.  I need to blog that," about, and they've gone right out of my head.  I have no idea what those notions might have been now.  Things have been more than a bit of a whirl.

Tax day came and went.  I managed to get back a dime or two from the Fed and turn right back around and send it to the great states of MS and, oddly enough, KY, since I was an AP Reader there last summer. Sigh.  The right hand gives and the left taketh away, I suppose. 

School is a madhouse.  Prom is coming.  I wish prom was during Spring Break so all the stupidity was in one neat bundle and we could just go on from there.  I guess I shouldn't feel that way.  Social ritual is a part of high school just like the educational side of it is, but it frustrates me to no end not to be able to get to the education part because I have to fight everybody's plans for mass bad decision before/during/and-or/after prom.  Life does not have to be lived in this way.

I figured out a solution to a technical problem that was nagging me.  Ed tech is such a strange beast.  You have to find something that is permitted by your system and still does the job.  Fortunately for me, our system is flexible and our administrators are bold and sane.  Also, we're a Google Apps school, and Google tends to have tools out there for all things if one looks hard enough.  After some tinkering and adapting, I found the thing I need to do the job I am trying to do, got it approved and running, and life is much easier now.  

Yesterday, my friend F. tagged me regarding his house and wand on Pottermore as I was frantically racing around the house doing my "Wednesday morning dance" of dogs to be walked, trash to be taken down for pickup, and last-minute preparation for school departure (late, of course, but what else is new?).  Two of my other friends had gotten into it back when you had to stay online at midnight and....I don't know...go on a quest or something?....to get in when it first opened. I had vaguely remembered them being quite excited about the site, but I sort of avoid things like that because I get pulled in and can't get out. 

Yeah.  So.  I got pulled in.

I am now a Gryffindor.  I have an owl and a wand and everything.  Sigh....  But it's okay.  It's a lovely site, very much in keeping with the feel of the books, I thought, and I enjoyed the time I spent on it.  As they say, time you enjoyed wasting was not wasted time.  I learned a lot of background and history to the books I didn't know before, but more than any other thing, what it made me want to do was reread the books.  Again.  For approximately the five-hundredth time.  Since I now have them on my Kindle (AT LAST!!!!!), this is easier than ever, and much more pleasant.  

I am hoping that today will be a bright, shiny good day.  Monday and Tuesday were profoundly not.  Yesterday was pretty good.  Maybe this week is on an escalating trend.  If not, well, I guess it's going by so fast it will be over soon regardless.

Eye-Opener

Last night for my Comp class, I had assigned Deborah Tannen's article "Sex, Lies, and Conversation" from a writing book we're using.  I had skimmed the article prior to assigning it, and I am familiar with Tannen generally from my Masters work in Linguistics, but when I really sat down and read the article in depth to prepare it for discussion, a couple of things occurred to me.  One, I have misunderstood most of my male friends since, oh, say time began and probably vice-versa, and two, certain relationships from my past have taken on very different meaning.

If you have never read this article, I challenge you to click the link and do so.  My class, men and women alike, found it interesting.  It's not a "guy bashing" article or anything like that.  It's linguistic pragmatics, a field I have always found fascinating.  Some of the things in here I had noticed previously.  As in all fields, once you're trained in them, you sort of can't cut the "researcher" or observer lens for that area off.  There were a couple of bits in there that made me smile and nod.

A few parts of it caught me flat-footed, though.  The bit about back-channeling, for instance, when you say, "Um-hum," "Yeah," or some other noise to indicate agreement, harmony, and understanding.  "I know what you mean.  Keep going."  Women do that a great deal more than men according to Tannen, and it causes pragmalinguistic misunderstandings.  I have seen it happen again and again, but I really didn't realize why.  After reading this article, I want to sort of slap myself in the forehead and say, "Duh."

I find the idea of having to talk to men as if they belong to a foreign culture just a little amusing, but perhaps that is not a bad way to approach it.  We are not the same.  Watch a group of men and a group of women together surreptitiously if you don't believe it.  The communication style is different.  I don't think the emotions underneath are significantly different, but the way those are expressed in our culture is.  If we could recognize the way that each gender is trying to give what the other desires and honor that, if both sides could bend and flex just a little, what amazing rapport could be established.  Maybe this should be required reading for us all.

Are You the Kind of Person...

...That You Would Want to Spend the Rest of Your Life Around?

This was a bellringer topic in my classroom today.  There were all sorts of answers given.  Then the students asked me for mine.  Would I want to spend the rest of my life around me?

I had already been turning the question over in my head, so I had a bit of an answer to give them.  Based upon my friendships, I guess...  Probably not.  My friends tend to be so different from me.  There is some overlap.  I guess I could use a Venn Diagram (oh God, geek much?  teacher much?) to show it.  There is similarity, but there is nobody that I can point to and say, "S/he is just like me."   The people I am closest to are farthest away from me, usually.  We complement each other.

But when I really look at that statement, perhaps I should say they are far away in certain directions.  There are some areas I do not gravitate toward.  I don't have those aspects in my own makeup, either.  Maybe I need a third circle on my diagram for that.  Or not.  Maybe I'm just overthinking this whole thing.

And maybe if I keep it up, nobody will want to hang around me.

Yeah....

Something Sweet and Good

I had news that one of my friends is going to have a baby.  She's a dear sweet person, and I know that she will make a wonderful mother.  Just the thought of her with a baby makes me smile and smile.  She had a picture of a tiny little onesie from the Kennedy Space Center, an astronaut baby outfit, on FaceBook as a way to make the big "announcement," and I thought, "How perfect.  How them."  How lucky that child will be.  I know her well enough to know there will never be a moment that won't be filled with the wonder with which she approaches the whole world.  Best wishes to all three of them.

Vanity of Vanities

And then there are the days where you know what you do is of no damn use at all.

There are people who very strongly believe that Shakespeare, Dickinson, Emerson should all be cast aside and no longer be taught anymore.  They say they have no relevance to students in this modern age, and they maintain that to continue trying to teach them is an exercise in both futility and bad pedagogy.  Instead, we should reach for non-fiction.  For graphic novels.  For pop lit.  Bedrock should be exchanged for glittering ephemera.

Today, I can't raise my hand to fight attitudes like that.  Waves of indifference, of apathy, of hostility, have swamped me.  There can't be any value in it if you have to work for it, right?  If it's not laid in your lap (on your choice of posh designer platters), my GOD, why should you extend your hand?

I just want to stand on the top of a mountain somewhere and scream until I have no more voice left, until I am empty, until I disappear.  The well is not deep enough for me to keep pulling up what is needed right now.

The Red Thread

I recently encountered this Chinese proverb, and the idea of it sort of fascinates me.  It is akin to the idea of a soulmate in Western culture, the idea that there is one person out there who is meant.  It also integrates to me a bit of the Fates or Norns, the spinners of the years.  So many things come together here.  I like the idea of all of us with red strings connecting us to one other, with those bits of scarlet stretching and pulling as we orbit to and away from that person, that bond we're not even conscious of there all the time just waiting until the right time to make itself noticed.  It reminds me of the Punch Brothers song "Don't Get Married Without Me."

As I turned it over in my mind, I started to wonder if there might not be strings of other types, maybe other colors for other bonds, if you like.  Maybe we are tied to all sorts of people, not just lovers.  I can imagine having a web of rainbow string that connects us to the people we need and the people we're meant to keep, the people who fit us and into whose lives we're meant to stay.  There's just something about it that's lovely.

You Probably Think This Song Is About You....

The other morning I was listening to something on the radio, and "American Girl" came on.  I sang along like I always do to Tom Petty, and I thought, "Yeah.  That song is mostly me."  That started me thinking about other songs that sort of "define" me or that I identify with strongly.  I don't mean songs that I love or that are my favorites.  That list would look very different, although I suppose one or two of these might make that list, too.  I pulled songs that have people in them with issues that feel like me.  Here then is a list of ten songs that can be said to define me in some way.  I suppose none of them can be said to be the whole picture, nor are all of them together the picture complete.  Call them facets of a prism, then, throwing colors on the wall.

1)      “American Girl” - Tom Petty

·     I am frightfully close to being that girl in that song.  Like her, I can’t help thinking “that there is a little more to life somewhere else” because “After all it [is] a great big world/ With lots of places to run to.”  I like to go see this world.  Often.  As much as I can, in fact.  Like the girl in the song, too, I wind up with certain people on my mind, no matter where I may roam.

2)      “Let Me Die in My Footsteps” - Bob Dylan

·      The whole song, really.  It has that Transcendentalist and Carpe Diem philosophy of seizing the moment and making a difference, of not coming to the end of your life only to find that you’ve had no life at all.  Let death take me in action, not waiting around for it.  I want always to be one of the ones who is “learning to live,” not the ones who is only “learning to die.”

3)      “Fly Away” - Lenny Kravitz

·      “I want to get away/I want to fly away/Yeah, yeah, yeah….”  Yeah.  All the time.  Yeah.  At the end of long bad days, more than usual.  Some days, this is my own personal national anthem.

4)      “Ecstasy” - Crooked Still

·    “Oh had I wings I would fly away and be at rest/ and I’d praise God in his bright abode…”  I wish for wings, renewal, and escape more often than any other thing, I suppose.  This song touches the church music of my childhood, the old hymns I was raised with.  There are several things about this one that are foundational.

5)      “Stay Away” - Chris Thile

·    “Cause she don’t care at all anymore/And I don’t know why I still do/ and why I’m telling you/ Cause you are the devil / And you can stay away from me…”  Every line of this song.  Switch the gender and you have every relationship and every piece of a relationship I’ve ever had.  Every time. 

6)      “Meheni Rachi” - Laura Marling version

·     “And I am from a country land, where beauty only grows/ You know I’d love to leave someday, I dare not ever go”, “I don’t need anybody / But I want someone”, “Perhaps I’ll be a bird one day, if I’m good enough / And I’ll get up and fly away and give up all this stuff.”  This song, too, is about expectations and not being able to live up to them, about needing a different path and longing for wings.  In a way, I guess it summarizes some of the others.  It’s just lovely. 

7)      “I’m Not That Girl” (Elphaba’s Version) - Wicked

·    “Don’t wish, don’t start/ Wishing only wounds the heart/ I wasn’t born for the rose and the pearl…”  I heard this song the first time when I went to see the musical with my friend, and it was as if somebody put my entire life to music, painful and true.

8)      “Dark Turn of Mind” - Gillian Welch

·     "You know that some girls are bright as the morning/ And some girls are blessed with a dark turn of mind.”  This song describes what it’s like to be less than “sunny” pretty accurately.  It also covers that it’s not always a bad place to be.  From the first time I heard it, I knew it was me.

9)      “I’m a Woman” - Koko Taylor

·    “That means I’m grown/I’m a woman, I’m a rushing wind/I’m a woman, I can cut stone with a pin/ I’m a woman, I’m a love maker/ I’m a woman, you know I’m an earth shaker.”  Booyah.  Enough said.  Tread carefully.    

10)   “Ruby Tuesday” - Rolling Stones

·     “Don’t question why she needs to be so free/She’ll tell you it’s the only way to be/ She just can’t be chained / To a life where nothing’s gained/ And nothing’s lost/ At such a cost.”  And there’s more.  The whole next stanza, for example.  I don’t care if Richards originally wrote it for a temporary groupie who wouldn’t stay or a long-term girlfriend he couldn’t keep.  The lyrics fit me in the here-and-now.  

Misc.

• Digging through a file drawer today as I tried desperately to locate the masters for the excerpt from Walden that I teach from, I stumbled across an entire notebook of student samples from old projects.  Many of them were from students I haven't seen in years. I sat down at the table in the back of my classroom and flipped through them.  It made me smile, but it also made me a little sad, too.  Bittersweet is a word that so often applies to my job.  There is so much beauty in it, so much luckiness in having been any part of those wonderful lives, and also always the necessary proud sadness when all the little birds are gone.
• It's amazing how happy a length of fabric can make a person.  I put on a new scarf I bought the other day, and it was like magic.  Maybe it was because it was bright orange.  I don't know.  It was a good thing. 
• Emerson today, and the start of a two-day mad dash through Transcendentalism.  I saved Self-Reliance for Friday the 13th, a secret treat for myself.  I don't know if any of this year's students will engage with the piece, but I hope so.  They only have a small excerpt from it, but as I was preparing it for discussion tomorrow, the mighty words rang in my mind once again like church bells sounding in bright clear morning air.  God, I love that essay.  What would it have been like to have known Emerson personally?  How wonderful even to contemplate.
• Hard to believe the 100th anniversary of Titanic is coming up.  Right now, 100 years ago, those people were on board blithely going about their lives, not knowing they were about to become welded to history in an inseparable manner.  Which brings me to....
• North Korea shot a missile today.  It broke up, but what fresh hell is this the beginning of?  I worry about my friends in Japan, my friend in Seoul, my guys in the military.  I wish we could all just have a little less crazy in the world for awhile.
• I found out that two other people I know had gone through the same thing I went through recently that distressed me so much.  If only I had told someone.  One of them was going through it at the same time as me.  One of them had been through it before.  We could have commiserated, mitigated, brought some peace to each other, but we have all gotten to the place where we just don't talk.  I have to do better.  I have to find a way to crawl out of my hole, put down the red pen, and do better. There is life outside the classroom door....
• My head is starting to kick, and I'm tired.  I have a test to finish up, but I think I'm crawling toward the bed.  I'm Scarlett O'Hara-ing this day.  Maybe tomorrow will bring me something bright, shiny, and beyond all hoping good.  

Technology Is Your Friend and Mine

It's amazing what you can do online these days.  Today I renewed my teacher's license.  I can't tell you what a huge relief that was to me.  When I applied for it the first time, there was no online option, and the paper application process was a nightmare.  It took forever to fill out, forever to process, and the entire process was so unsatisfactory that the people in Jackson had barricaded themselves in their office with big, hostile signs on their door saying "Thou Shalt Not Enter" and "We Will NOT Process Hand-Delivered Applications."  Any encounter with the office of licensure was sure to end in tears and bloodshed, probably on both sides of the equation.  It was not uncommon to wait six weeks, get a license back and have it printed wrong leading to six more weeks of waiting and praying for a new one that was right.  Most people just took a day off school to go over to Jackson and "hand carry" their stuff to MDE (hence the nasty signs).

Today, I sat down, signed in to an account I had created the other day when I became aware of the website service, entered some information, and notified my Central Office when I was done.  They, having the hard copies on file for everything, were able to verify, and by some arcane ritual I don't understand, the necessary was invoked and I now have a shiny new license good for five more years.  No pain.  No blood.  No trips to Jackson.  No screaming into a phone.  I have the e-copy right now.  The actual paper document will get here when it gets here.  It's not as important as the electronic document right now, anyway, since the fact that it exists in the big computer at MDE is the thing that is of vital, earthshatteringly immediate need.

This is why technology is good.  Everything that has an application should have it online.  I know all about the risks of breach of confidentiality and your personal information going awry, but the speed factor in entry and processing really can't be over-praised.  What used to take SIX WEEKS (or more since this is the "busy season") took less than two full days.  Yay Tech. Yay, yay, yay.  Really.

I can sort of breathe again now.  Now that I know how to keep up with it, I can make sure it doesn't get to this crisis point again.  Because believe you me, buddy, it better not EVER get like it got Thursday again, or I'm going to have to be carried out on a stretcher.

When Everybody Else Notices, Too....

Last night, I was at Mom and Dad's after a long day having dinner with them, and they asked me how I was doing.  I stopped and thought about it.  Usually after a day as long as I'd had, I'd be exhausted.  I'd be barely awake, dragging myself along trying to make it home so I could collapse.  

I wasn't, though.  I felt good.  I had energy.  I was (for me) chatty.  That is more or less what I relayed to them.    Their response was that they had noticed.  They seemed....relieved.  Apparently the changes in me lately are significant enough to be marked by others, and that made me pause.

I knew the 200 mg dosage of the Topamax had profoundly affected me internally.  I was constantly tired, always fighting to get through what I call the "glass wall" between me and the universe.  I had no energy and my couch was my friend.  What  I didn't realize was that I was doing so bad a job of winning.  I haven't been myself, not for awhile.  I only feel like I'm starting to come back to myself now.  I just thought more of it was internal than it was.

This also makes me wonder again what it will be like to be totally free of this stuff.  I long for the day when it's not in my life at all.  How deep are its roots into me?  What other changes has it made?  I have been on it so long now that I (quite literally with its help) no longer remember what I was like before.  That's more than a little scary, but sort of exciting, too.  I mean, I wasn't exactly an axe murderer before, right?  I hope the changes that continue to be revealed as I step down the dosage keep being good ones.

Unstuck

I have worked crazy hard the past two days to get everything on my list done.  I didn't quite make it, but I have made tremendous strides in getting the house back in order, things bought, and tasks long delayed done.  It feels wonderful.

I've had things on my list for a long time.  Some of them are small things like "put a hook in my closet to replace the one that broke so I can hang my camera gear up again."  Some of them are bigger like "go see my best friend."  In the past two days, I just did them.  Piles of clutter that have been obscuring huge spaces are gone.  My taxes are ready to go to the accountant.  The little collection of pressed pennies I've collected from here in the States and pence from England finally got put into a shadowbox display.  Weird stuff that I ran out of has been replenished.  I thinned, rediscovered, and replaced part of my wardrobe.  It's like coming back from the dead a bit.

I don't know if it's the change in my medicine or a changing philosophy, but the strange lethargy that has been surrounding me for too long to count seems to be lifting.  Today I even got the fifth ear piercing I've been contemplating for ages.

I also had the best lunch with my best friend.  She helped me feel better about what happened to me Thursday.  It turns out she'd been in exactly the same situation herself, and she told me that it wasn't something I needed to worry about like I have been.  I guess I should have called her with it when it happened, but I didn't want to bother anybody.  It is amazing how much better it feels to have someone else who has been there tell you it's going to be okay.

I haven't really been talking much with any of my friends lately; life has intervened.  Sometimes it's been my life.  Sometimes it's been theirs. With some of them, I feel the loss of the contact greatly.  Some of them have cut me loose; I'm not interesting anymore, I suppose.  It makes me sad to think about losing them, but they've sort of made their position clear by their actions and lack thereof.  I'm going to be respectful of that and just let it go.  I guess I've probably done the same thing to others and not realized it.  People grow and change.  With the friend I saw today and a few others, though, we always just pick right back up where we left off.  It really doesn't seem to matter how much time elapses in between.  This is the best kind of friendship, the rarest and the one most worth working to preserve.

Now it's time to get some sleep.  The dogs have finally come in for the night.  The last of what I can cram in to today is done, or will be when I put one last load of clothes in the dryer. It feels good to be unstuck.  I like it.  I hope I can maintain it.

Not Really My Fight

I realized today that I'm worrying about things that I can't personally do anything about.  Despite my fierce need to be independent in all things, I don't have the power to control certain outcomes or events.  I can do my best and take strides to achieve desired goals, but in the end, all the worry in the world doesn't make anything actually happen.  Either it will or it won't based on my work and based upon whether or not it is the right thing for me at this time in my life.  I'm trying to fight battles that aren't mine to fight.

Somewhere along the way, I decided it was all mine to defend, all mine to scrap over.  I took everything out of the hands that are so much more capable, the hands that made both me and the situation, the hands that actually  can manage it all, and I started making a hash of it.  Is is any wonder that things don't come out well when someone who isn't qualified tries to do the job?

I need to focus on what is actually my role:  work hard, work smart, improve myself the best I can, make the best choices I can based on the information put in front of me, take care of the people and things put under my care (myself included), and keep moving forward.  Meanwhile, I am going to trust, that hardest of things for me, that the things outside my role are well-kept and well-managed by God.

He has never failed me before.

Get in My Way and I'll Dust You, Too

I have been working on my house since about nine this morning.  If I keep working on it until about nine tonight, it might be a place that doesn't shame me for others to see once more.

Housekeeping is not my forte.  If I could have extra money in my budget to spend on anything (and understand that travel is not extra for me), I would spend it on somebody to come in and take care of the heavy cleaning for me on a regular basis.  That is my idea of pure luxury.  I spend ten hours or so at school, come home, and I cannot make myself think that hauling out the vacuum is a worthy thing to do.  That neglect catches up, though....

Today, so far, I have repaired the vacuum (thank God Daddy taught me how to use basic tools and not to be afraid to take things apart when the need arises); vacuumed all the floors (no easy task in this house with its endless carpets); steam cleaned them; bucket mopped the vast expanses of linoleum with ammonia (I don't play); cleaned out my closets and put away some things I bought yesterday and the massive piles of laundry that have just lived (folded, mind you) on the dryer; cleaned up the kitchen; washed all the odd loads of laundry:  sheets, rugs, shower curtain, bedspread, dog blankets, and so forth; taken my feather mattress outside for a day of hot sun; hauled all my potted plants outside again and wept over their sad state here at the end of winter; and now I'm taking a bit of a break.

I still have about five things on my list, including the rearrangement of some furniture and massive amounts of clutter removal.  It's so easy for things to pile up in the space near my door.  There are about six scarves draped across one chair alone.  I cannot see my kitchen table top at all.  If I can get that area reclaimed and orderly, I will feel like I have accomplished a major victory.

It will be a nice thing to have a clean house.  I can drag in at whatever hour I manage to come home and not have to feel guilty for being a bad Southern Woman on top of whatever other crap I have going.  That will be worth all this effort now.

Wonderfulness

Something horrible happened to me yesterday.  In the way of such things, I can't fix it until Tuesday, so today, I did things that were designed to distract me and make me feel better.  I got my hair cut (already scheduled conveniently).  I picked up some supplies to work on a craft project I've had in mind for awhile.  I found a jacket that I love that I'll wear for Easter.  I made plans to see my best friend Monday.  I spent long hours in my hammock reading.  I took a couple of pictures.

Tonight, I went to Mom and Dad's for dinner, and while I was there, one of us made one of our usual family in-joke references, this time to the Bill Cosby comedy albums they had when I was little.  I used to listen to them all the time.  We all did.  I knew "Chicken Heart" and "Noah: Right" by heart almost.  When I moved to other forms of media, tapes and then CDs, I left those big 45s behind.  They still have them, but I don't think any of us have anything with a turntable that still works.  (Well....I might have one that still works, but it's on an ancient  console entertainment center in the back of my house.)

The longer we talked about the routines and the pieces of them we always quote, the more I wanted them.  I decided to look on amazon to see if they had been converted to mp3(because hasn't everything?) and get them if they had.  There they all were.  The three of us could remember having Wonderfulness, but it took some time to remember which one of the others had the ones I wanted on it.

I'm looking forward to hearing them again.  They're finishing up downloading to iTunes from the amazon Cloud now.  Once again, I have to say how much I love technology and all the instant gratification it allows.  It's a wonderful, beautiful thing when it works right.

Welcome Back

My old friend the migraine is back.  I've taken a big pill, so who knows where this will go.  I am just taking a minute before going and falling down because falling down without taking the minute feels too much like defeat. I just keep telling myself this is only one.  One does not equal six.

I felt off all day today, so I sort of thought it might be coming.  I stumbled more than usual the last two days with my words, had the preliminary twinges of pain, but I was praying it was only distant rumbles of thunder, a storm that would threaten and not break.  Maybe because of the real storms we've been having, this was not the case.

I did write something today.  I had inspiration from an unexpected source, and so between bouts of migraining, I pulled from it and got a poem.  I'm a little at lost ends about what to do with the poem now, though.

I'm drifting now, so I guess I should stop trying to write.  There was more I wanted to say, but since my friend is back, I guess I'll just go entertain him.  Sigh.  Don't you love it when company drops by uninvited?

Keep Your Feet Moving...

...and you won't fall down.  This is my personal mantra right now.  Everything is so freaking busy.

Yesterday during off period one, I ran around trying to take care of club business, getting a fundraiser we'd done deposited and dues turned in to our book keeper.  That may not sound like it takes a long time, but anything involving money takes a LONG TIME.  There are forms, more forms, counting, signing, forms.  Did I mention the forms?  Yeah.  It felt good to get it all turned in and squared away though.  Money makes me nervous when it's not mine.

At the end of every school year, it always seems like suddenly there are four hundred things that are coming together urgently at the same time.  Selection of the AP students for the coming year.  Selection of the Honors Society students for the new year and induction of the same.  Awards for the outgoing Seniors.  Departmental business such as policy changes and summer reading.  Grading.  Final prep for the AP test.  Things will be coasting along from Spring Break and then suddenly, WHAM, tidal wave.  I sort of have to grab whatever piece of driftwood I can cling to as it flies past me and ride the wave as best I can.

I try to get one thing or at least one big part of one thing done each day.  Except for the grading, this usually works pretty well.  At least in theory.  At least it makes me feel better.  At least I can say that, you know, I'm trying....  That way when it all piles up on me at the end, as it always does, I know I did something to avoid that inevitable moment when three deadlines are on the same day.

Funny, isn't it, how when you leave college you believe you leave all that sort of thing behind?  Heh.  (Sigh.)

Right Between the Eyes

Did you ever have one of those moments where you'd been holding on to something, and suddenly you realize with absolute certainty, "Yeah.  I'm going to have to let that go now"?  A moment of ultimate disambiguation?

I just had one of those.

It hit me like a ten-pound sledge right between the eyes.  Well, probably somewhat lower than that, more to the middle of my chest, actually, but the simile holds....

It's funny how fixated we can become of a concept, a belief that things will eventually go a certain way, our way, in the end.  Call it the "feel-good movie" syndrome, the "fairy tale ending" syndrome.  Call it whatever you like, but the simple truth of the matter is that the simple truth of the matter is all too frequently ignored for our own stubborn persistence that it is going to be something it is just not eventually.  If we wait long enough.  If we want deeply enough.

Silly, isn't it?

It's okay to be awakened from this, too.  I mean, okay, it hurts like hell.  I can't lie about it, but better the pain of that than the pain of continually stumbling through the fog of the myth, the lie, that we weave for ourselves, I think.  Better the sharp, quick pain from which we can then heal than the slow self-deception from which we never will.

So now it's time to box up all the bits and pieces that are left, make sure there aren't any little shards left in the corners that the broom missed, and toss it all away.  I'm fairly positive that things are going to feel odd for a couple of days.  When something like this happens and something you've held dear dies, maybe that's okay, too.  Maybe that's not a bad thing.  Maybe what you're actually feeling is the world returning to your soul like oxygen to your lungs when you've been almost on the verge of drowning.

I'm going to consider it all to be for the good.  At this point, there's no reason to do otherwise.  What's done is gone.  What's to come lies ahead.  They tell me that looking back will get you only bad things, grief, sadness, regret, transformation into a pillar of salt, even.  I guess I'll just keep putting one foot in front of the other, then, and see what's over the next hill.

Aaaaaiiiiirrr.....

I just gave up the battle and cut on the A/C.  I held out as long as I could.  The first of April is ridiculously early to have to cut it on, but it was 10:30 pm and 78 degrees in my house with all the windows open and the attic fan running.  Enough already.

I think it's probably cooler than that outside, but that's sort of the thing with this house.  It's been remodeled so many times that it has very thick walls.  It holds whatever temperature it reaches for a long time.  I know it got really hot in here earlier today when it was 80-something outside because I was trying to take a nap and I kept waking up at every little sound and having bad weird flashes of dream in-between.  I don't sleep well when it's hot, another reason I went ahead and gave up on the A/C battle.

Blessedly, the good old unit outside is steadily churning away (knock wood and praise the saints, the fairies, Tesla, and anybody else who might be in charge of holding all the the little wires together inside it).  Granny bought good stuff whenever she bought, purchasing for the long haul, a philosophy I have always tried to follow even though my crappy budget makes it very, very hard.  After all, if you buy it right the first time, you usually don't have to buy it again, or at least not for a very long time....  (Unless the *#$#@*s install it wrong, but that's a whole 'nother story...)

Well, I think my last washer of the night has finally stopped spinning, so I'm going to go hang what needs to be hung, tumble what needs to be tumbled, crate a dirty white dog (don't ask.  really.), and put myself into a bed that hopefully won't be stifling now.  Maybe with this sweetly cool air will come sweet dreams.  Heh.  I know.  Don't ask Tesla, the fairies, and the saints for TOO many miracles out of one central unit, right?

What I Can't Say

There are things I would normally blog to get out of my head, put here to sort the pieces of, look at once I was done, revisit, resort, and then let go, but for various reasons, I feel constrained in doing so currently.  I'm in one of those moods where I want to lighten up my load, throw away everything that is bothering me, every reminder of it, shed it all, and leave.

Why am in that mood so often, though?  Why is the way I deal with things not "fight and fix" but "toss and go"? When the actions of others who matter to me cause me pain or irritate me, my most common reaction is not to say something, not even to let them know.  It's just to get away from them.  And stay away.  I doubt it's even noticed by those I flee, to be honest, but the reaction has always been a part of me for as long as I can remember.  Leave the conversation, leave the room, leave the house, leave it all....  No warning, no nasty note.  It's not for attention.  It's not drama.  I just have to go.

I can wrap the solitude around me like a comforting blanket, get out and get in the car, drive for a day, be in a place where I am unknown, let the abstract voices of others wash across me, engage in trivialities with strangers, wear an anonymous mask where I don't have to be...anything, really, that I usually am, just some woman, and there is something soothing about it.  It doesn't call on those places that are injured, that are bruised.  It doesn't require anything from me.

There is no chance of an argument, a stupid conversation that goes wrong and is misunderstood, a silence that begins and doesn't end.

Shouldn't I dig into myself and say, "No.  This matters, and even if it hurts, it's time to say it"?  If it matters, shouldn't I try?  Or is it better to just let whatever it is go, maintain whatever sort of status quo there is, take my stripes as I'm sure I'm giving some, too, along the way in my own way, and go on?  Which is best - the saying because it matters and it's intolerable or the silence because it matters and it's intolerable?

I have no answer to this paradox.  It pins me down like a specimen in a Cabinet of Curiosities, maybe titled the Girl With the Mask for all the things I hide myself behind.  Maybe someday either I will figure out how to step out or somebody will come looking.