Immortals (or, What the Cornbread HELL Were They Thinking?)

I am teaching a course in mythology at long last, and so I've sort of gotten interested in filmed versions of the Greek tales.  Tonight, I was flipping through my Netflix queue, and I noticed that I had, at some point, dumped Immortals in.  I'd had a good supper of breakfast (work that out....I'll wait...), and so I was ready to brave it.  After all, one of the world's most gorgeous men is in it, Henry Cavill.  (Don't believe me on that?  Okay.  Here...  Also, you have made him angry.)

I mean.  Really.  Shouldn't this alone make for a good movie?  The whole concept for awhile there seemed to be mostly unclothed Henry.  Any film with this as its main premise should be good.  Right?

Oh, hell-to-the-no.  Tarsim Singh's yellow filter and slow motion shot privileges need to be revoked immediately.  I don't know exactly whom to call about this, but I'm looking into it.  Not everything needs to look like saffron rice.  Not every kill (and my GOD but there were a lot of them)  needed to flip over in the air and spray a fountain of blood that fell drop by drop with a big "bawwwww" noise in the background when it happened.

And then there was what was so laughably called a plot.  I don't care where it came from.  If you're going to have a character named Theseus, he should do "Theseus-y" things.  Okay.  So there was sort of a labyrinth   There was sort of a Minotaur.  Sort of.

The thing that kills me is that the real story, the one you can find a summary of in your handy-dandy copy of Edith Hamilton is SO GOOD.  Why would you need to crap it up with a bunch of stuff that you STOLE...um...borrowed from other myths, other cultures, etc.  There's a reason we've been telling these stories for thousands of years folks....

It's not like there weren't some good actors in it, too.  The aforementioned Henry Cavill is good in everything I've seen him in.  He personally wasn't bad in this.  Since there were only about twenty lines of dialog total interspersed between all the slo-mo and yellowness, it's a bit hard to hold him responsible for this.  And he is so pretty...

Okay.  Okay.  I'll stop.

The highlight of the whole thing to me was Zeus.  The portrayal of the Olympian gods was actually fairly cool.  Their costumes were...interesting...but I liked the idea of them changing forms because they were perennially young and beautiful.  I mean you read it, but it doesn't sink in.  I had that moment when Athena was talking to Zeus at the beginning and told him now that she'd seen him in his "old man" disguise, he looked more like a father.  When he wasn't wearing the disguise, his behavior might have been paternal, but his appearance wasn't.  I never really considered that before.

I also would have loved to have known more about this "we're leaving mankind ALONE" mantra Zeus was singing.  The Greek gods I am familiar with could not be farther from this.  They hang out with, romance, support, hinder, kill off, and impregnate mortals like it's their full-time job.  Most especially, Zeus.  Hmm.....were we getting all philosopho-religious-new-agey there?

All in all, I think there should have been more Zeus.  His character felt like it had the potential to be fantastic, but instead, Singh wanted more scenes with oddly-painted, fantastically-costumed (what WAS that on the Oracle and her Sisters' heads?  Lampshades?  Am I wrong?), and dismembered people.  Oh, and more streams of blood.  I bet there was a "blood boy" on hand to splash it about upon demand.  I didn't stop to look that up in the credits, but I bet it's there.  Maybe two, even.

Sigh.  Yeah.  I'll stop.  I've made Zeus cry.  I'm a bad, bad person.

So.  It wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen, but I definitely think it's not a "do-over."  Maybe if I hadn't gone into it expecting a movie about Theseus to be....well...about Theseus, I would have liked it better.  I know.  The ultimate social movie gaffe.  Consider my face red.

My Car

The View from the Car This Afternoon

I realized as I was sitting in my car this afternoon once I got home that my car has become this odd little bubble of peace.  I often come home and before going in sit and go through email or FaceBook, things I could do as easily if not more so inside.  Sometimes I stay and listen to the rest of a song that caught my attention on the radio.  Sometimes, I just sit in the quiet and decompress by looking up at the sky or the trees.  

As I always do when some oddity of mine catches my attention, I started wondering why I do that, why I don't simply get out and come in like all the "normal people."  I decided that it's because the car is sort of a happy limbo for me.  It's not school.  I am not called upon to give more with less or grade any damn thing.  I am completely free from red pens and meetings.  It's also not home...quite...  There are no dogs to walk, no messes to feel guilty about ignoring, no chores to be done.  It's a time-out zone.  All I have to do is just...BE.  There is almost nowhere else left like that for me that I can think of.  Every other place has requirements and obligations.  

Maybe, then, it's no wonder I'm so often reluctant to lock the door and walk away.  I guess everybody needs at least the illusion of freedom in their lives.  Maybe it's a cheap thrill, but I'll take what I can get. 

Stuff and Things, Etc.

In these bodies we will live
In these bodies we will die
And where you invest your love
You invest your life.
“Awake My Soul” - Mumford & Sons

After awhile, friction wears down the edges of the machinery.  Maybe that makes it run more smoothly sometimes.  For this particular engine, it’s starting to make everything just the tiniest - and most crucial - bit out of alignment.

I am so tired of watching people choose bad things, harmful things, things that will never help them achieve.  It’s like watching somebody in a burning house shoving away rescue.  Probably more precisely, it’s like watching someone dying of thirst refuse water.

Oh, it’s just another moment when I’m tired and sad and I don’t have anything left to give.  It’s nothing new.  That doesn’t really make it easier to deal with.  It is so hard to pull what it necessary out of a mostly-empty container.  I’m out of ideas about refilling it.

The quote from Mumford above has always been meaningful to me, never more than when I'm tired and sad, feeling defeated.  Maybe I've invested too much in this. Too much love.  Too much life.   I don't know how to turn away, though, and I don't know how to do it any other way.  I'm not sure I want to learn.

Maybe tomorrow will be Scarlett's "another day," and I will find a way to get over this.  One day, though.  One day.  I know I'm not going to get up or get over at all.

Perspective

"No human thing is of serious importance." ~ Plato

I both agree and disagree with this statement.  The little trials and tribulations of our lives really don't make much a mark on the hard surface of the world.  In this way, Plato is totally right.  We get caught up in trivia.  So much of our daily lives are filled with minutia that are of paramount importance to us, have the power to make us ecstatic or miserable, and when we step away from them for a moment and see those concerns for what they really are, many of them can look small or petty.  

Our individual suffering or joy is only a drop in the bucket of the total history and experience around us.  And yet, that total sea is composed of those little drops.  Our world is not vast, not macro.  We are beings who live and die on the micro scale.  The tiny ripples in our pools have the effect of tidal waves when that is the boundary of all you know.  

I think this quote can be good for putting things into perspective, to help us remember that we need to look at the whole instead of only our little part.  If we are finding a way not to be trapped by the useless and the trivial, then good for us.  If we're turning a deaf ear to the cries of those nearby who are genuinely in need, then perhaps we need to think again.

Mind Eraser

(with apologies to the Black Keys)

After an extremely stresl day, I suppose what happened was only to be expected.  I got to lunch and my off period, and the hammer of the gods struck.

It's not like I hadn't had warnings.  The lights were a little too bright.  I had those little twinges, those little previews of pain.  I had a hard time getting to names for characters, people, things.

I managed to take my Maxalt, and for a horrible little while, I lay across my desk and prayed for the pain to stop.  You know that didn't happen.  Instead, I just felt the blanket of disconnection spreading over the spikes of agony and the rolling waves of nausea.  I staggered downstairs and asked for permission to leave early.  I knew I only had a short time to get home before I would have to call someone to come get me.

I managed to get to the car, rolled down the windows, let the cold air wash over me until I got to the interstate and had to roll them up.  Then the weird crap started.

I had turned off the radio when I got in the car.  I couldn't stand the noise.  As I drove, I kept hearing music.  Very faint, but music.  I checked my phone, thinking it was ringing without me feeling the vibration.  I tried to locate the source of the sound.  Then came the horrible knowledge that it was just coming from some misfiring in my brain.

When I finally got home and laid down, somehow, I had another sensation I've never had, that of being somewhere else.  I don't even know how to describe it.  I knew I was home in my own bed, but somehow, I also felt that I was in the living room of the trailer we had when I was a small child before my parents built their house.  Maybe it was a trick of the light triggering some deep memory.  I was dizzy and quite frankly scared.

I am better now after two hours of sleep, but I still feel weak and exhausted.  I am up long enough to eat and take care of a few necessary tasks, and then I'm going back to bed.  The only explanation for what happened is that the headache must have somehow churned up the sediment of my mind.  Maybe the electrical activity was in a different part of my brain this time.  I only know that I hope I never have to experience again.

Come On, Thanksgiving

(a list)

We're almost to a week-long holiday.  If it doesn't hurry up and get here, I'm going to have to "take a day."  I'm that worn out.  Why, you ask?  Let me tell you about today...

• 5 AM - Wake up.  Stare balefully at the betrayal of the iPhone. Try with limited success to make finger slide across screen to stop annoying alarm.  Eyelids slam shut.  Impatient cat attack finishes awakening process.
• Then proceeds about an hour and a half of running in circles, sacking up trash, and forgetting to put supper in the CrockPot followed by a mad dash down the driveway during which some of the trash fell off the roof of the car.
• 7:10 (ish) AM - School.  Restart the computer.  Try to get my bellringer up.  Fight the computer.  Try to get the bellringer up.  Pray/curse/beseech the computer.  Try to get the bellringer up...
• 7:30 AM - DUTY.  (or, as I like to think of it, my little monthly slice of hell...)
• 7:50 AM - "Let's get ready to rumbllllleeeee...."
• 9:50 AM - Hi.  I'll be observing you today, but I won't be telling you what my magic rubric says.  I'll just sit over here in the corner and intimidate the crap out of you, K?  Carry on like I'm not over here scaring you.  
• 10:15 AM - Prezi rebellion.  Mad flailing at computer.  Prezi recalcitrance.  Nervous restructuring of lesson plan.  Mad scratching on scary top-secret rubric by observer.  Prezi compliance.
• Then proceeds a pageant of Medea, administrator-in-my-room, trying to balance giving instructions to my TA and teaching....
• 11:50 AM - WRITE.  STOP TALKING AND WRITE.  
• 12:10 PM - REALLY.  WRITE.  STOP TALKING AND WRITE.  Yes.  I will fix your computer.  Bring it here.
• (repeat as needed)
• 1:20 PM - four hundred and eighty seven problems.  And a jalapeno pimento cheese sandwich.
• "Off period" - take down bulletin board.  put up bulletin board. make a large paper turkey.  staple silk leaves to bulletin board.  grading.  cleaning.  99 emails.  grading.  bulletin board.
• Last bell - DUTY.  (funfunfunfunfunfun)
• After school - grading.  grading.  singing along to the music.  grading.  redo whiteboard for tomorrow.  water plants.  print off paper turkey feathers.
• 5:45 PM - WTW?  It's DARK OUTSIDE.  Time to go home.
• Dinner with the parents....not cooked by me because of 5:00 AM snafu.
• 7:45 PM - singing along with the radio.  an unexpected puppy looking for a home.  mass canine violence and chaos ensues.

Except for the unexpected dog, today wasn't all that out of character.  Now can you see why I need a holiday?

True Sight

There comes a moment in everything, I guess, where you see it and see it clearly for the first time.  It doesn't matter what it is that obscured your vision for so long.  Maybe it was some kind of love.  Maybe it was something like hope.  Maybe it was sheer deliberate stubbornness in your own rightness.  Eventually all the scales fall away and what you're left with is no blurred glory, but only the pure truth.

And you'd think that truth would be lovely to look upon.  You'd think that it would be somehow holy, glowing and white, since it is that thing we chase, that thing we long for.  How seldom that is actually the case...

See, actually, the deceptions we weave for ourselves are the beautiful things.  We wrap something stark and horrible, something relentless and uncaring, in layers of warmth and color.  It's the old defense of the oyster against sand.  We create iridescent beauty to hide the things that have the power to break us. Therefore, the moment when the veils are drawn aside and all the illusions are destroyed, that moment that should be liberating, becomes instead a moment of almost intolerable cruelty, of Truth echoing Hamlet's "I must be cruel only to be kind."

Now that it's all a tumbledown mess and I cannot look at it anymore, even though what I'm seeing is only what was really there all along, the true test of me, I suppose, is going to be what I do next. Do I start covering over the real, naked, broken ugliness of it again, patch the holes, put it back up on its pedestal, pretend it is not broken?  Or do I have the strength to walk away from what has never been and will never be whole?

A Good Day

I slept fairly late this morning, got up, took a hot shower, put on my jeans and a favorite tshirt, put a hot battery in the Nikon, and headed out.  Today was the Soule Live Steam Festival.

When I got out of the car, I could hear the music of the calliopes.  Even though it was fairly warm, the plumes of steam trailed into the air.  As I got closer, those unmistakable smells of the engines reached out to me, burning wood, machine oil, and sawdust.

I love the Live Steam Festival.  I look forward to it every year.  The engines themselves are fascinating.  I also love the people.  I like to watch the parents with their kids.  I like to watch the hard-core fanatics talking and exchanging information.  I like to watch the men group together and talk, gesture, explain.

This year, I did two things that I haven't done before.  I went to the Railroad Museum, and I made a sand mold.  The Railroad Museum was a lot better than I was expecting.  They had this tremendous wall of railroad lanterns that was beautiful.  To my surprise, there were all sorts of people there selling railroad related items.  Two vendors were just selling model trains. I took photos of their tables.  The colors were interesting.  Amtrak had these little "junior engineer" paper hats out for the kids.  You have no idea how tempted I was to get one for myself....

The Mississippi Industrial Heritage Museum where the Soule festival is held is getting better every year.  They have more engines, and this year, they had a tremendous number of traditional crafts on display.  People were happily learning about loom weaving, broom making, wood carving, and printing.  Some of those crafts were actually hands-on.  In the machine shop, the belt-driven machines were being operated by students from a local community college.  I stood for a long time and watched them turning steel rods on the lathe, making things in the blacksmith shop.

For several years I have thought about making one of the sand molds they pour every year at Soule.  Either the tables were crowded or I was in a hurry.  This year, I just decided I was going to do it regardless.  It was relaxing.  I made an owl, but I didn't stay for the 4:00 pouring.  I have to go back and get it tomorrow.  I can't wait to see the end result.  I hope it came out well.

I spent the rest of my afternoon fiddling with the pictures.  Even though I have shot that area pretty thoroughly, I got one or two pictures I was happy with.  The most important thing was how nice it felt to be out with the camera seeing something I don't get to see everyday.  I feel more relaxed now that I have in a long time.  I wish there were more things like this to do.

And Then There Are Those Other Days....

Today, I ran out of fight.  I was trying to get a class through a portion of a novel, and everywhere I looked, heads were lowered, eyes were closing.  Every answer I was getting was just pulled desperately out of the air.  I guess I could have launched into an angry tirade or a lecture about the importance of it all, but I just couldn't.  I felt as fragile as spun glass, like any sudden movement was going to shatter me in such a way that I couldn't ever put the pieces back together again.  I told them to spend the remainder of the period doing SSR, and I graded the quiz on the section they were supposed to have read.

Most of my students this year engage, or at least they "play along."  There are days though, as there are in every teacher's life, when it doesn't click.  Lately, because we are having the students read a novel, it's happening more and more.  I refuse to believe they can't do it.  If they were genuinely incapable, I would have more patience with it, honestly.

What I cannot stand, what is destroying me, is when they can but they WON'T.  It is unbearable to me to sit and watch somebody choose ignorance over knowledge.  It's never wrong not to know something, but it is wrong to continue to shun knowledge when it is offered to you.  Any time you don't take an opportunity to better yourself, you have broken one of the great unwritten commands of the universe - Go forth, do, and learn from it.

And yes, I know they're young.  I know they're distracted.  I know that apparently, I am failing to make it "relevant" enough despite all my best efforts to the contrary, a fact that continues to depress me.  And no, it's not everybody.  I can't learn to let go of the ones who do.  I can't deny that some part of me envies teachers who just sort make the sign of the cross over it and go on.  I am sure their blood pressure stays much lower than mine, that they don't get nasty ripping headaches.  I just don't know how to stop letting it affect me so much.

Today, just now, I need to be grading, doing lesson plans, prepping materials for the week ahead.  Instead, all I want to do is sit very still and try to pull my pieces back together.  Maybe if I can do that, then I can find what it's going to take to try to get up and go again tomorrow morning.

Heart in My Throat

I just pressed send on one of the biggest requests I've ever made of an employer.  My heart is in my throat now as the waiting begins.

I want to apply for a Fulbright, but I am going to have to have the backing of my district to be able to participate, and I know that what I'm asking for is a huge, huge thing.  I truly believe that I am competitive for it.  I am by no means the best there will ever be, and I'm sure there are people who have done more to ready them for it.  I am not going to put myself down, though.  I want it.  I have wanted it for quite some time.  Therefore, I am going to simply close my eyes and go after it.

But I can't stop the birds-in-too-small-a-cage fluttering my heart is doing....

Elvis, Doves, and an Owl Cake

The other day I was using Poll Everywhere with one of my classes.  We were putting up answers to a question, and since a great number of students had been called from class for a quick meeting with the counselor, I wasn't in any great hurry to move through them quickly and leave the rest of the students behind.

We lingered, and the students put up good answers, thoughtful answers to the questions.  I am still trying to remember how we got on the subject, but suddenly we were talking about what it would take for me to get married.  I have tried, but I can't figure out how we made that leap.  I'm sure it was there in the literature we were studying.  The actual steps between points A and B are just fuzzy now.

Anyway.

I think the students were a little shocked when I told them I didn't exactly have a lot of faith that would be happening for me now.  I shouldn't say things like that to them, I guess.  They are young and precious, and most of them still believe in the idea of everybody pairing up like animals heading into the Ark.  The simple truth, though, is that some of us are unicorns, Chimeras, phoenixes, and dragons, and we really didn't get on the boat in time....

After seeing their faces, I hastened to assure them that it was really reaching a point where it didn't bother me as much, that I was okay with it.  I told them that I was free to travel, free to move, free to do or not do whatever I wanted.  I told them that I wasn't easy to live with.  They weighed all this, and then they more or less dismissed it out of hand and started planning...no, that's not really the right word...plotting... my wedding for me.  It got funny really fast after I told them I have always had a secret dream (okay, not so secret....everybody who knows me has heard this) to get married in Vegas by an Elvis.  They found this acceptable as long as there were doves.  Apparently, there have to be doves.  The doves are key.  And a cake shaped like an owl.  Or a cake from which someone dressed as an owl leaps.  And Shakespeare.

It was so funny.  I could see it all so clearly in my mind.  The birds, the inevitable white cape with red satin lining on the bejeweled Elvis, the owl-shaped wedding cake, some guy in a doublet and ruff.  The hilarity of it.  And you know what?  If that's the closest I ever get to having it, that was a pretty good deal, actually.

Random Items

...likely to be found in the pockets of my "teacher apron" at any given moment.
(a list)

• a blue Pelikano Jr. fountain pen
• pick any three:
• red grading pen
• Sharpie highlighter
• Sharpie
• dry erase marker
• Uniball Vision black ink, micro tip pen
• the last three orange Post-its on a pad which have now become sort of free-form origami
• pick any two:
• stereo remote
• projector remote
• PowerPoint clicker
• lightsaber laser pointer
• library passes
• a box of Maxalt
• a pair of purple scissors with a polkadot sheath
• pick one:
• peppermints
• cinnamon disks
• small roll of colored duct tape
• dry erase board eraser
• bulletin board tack stapler
• at least one pin that has fallen off the front and needs mending

What do you carry around in your "pockets" during the day?

What a Little Moonlight Can Do

My yard, my porch, the field beside the house, all of it is soaked in the most beautiful full moon of the year, the October moon.  I came home from church and walked my dogs by light so bright that I almost couldn't tell where the security light ended and where the moonlight began.  The dogs were full of happiness because everything is out and about in the woods, so adventures aplenty abound.

Today, this night of the October moon, is when the ancient Celts would be celebrating their new year, Samhain, the night  when the veil between the land of the living and the land of the dead is pulled aside.  I'm enjoying the beauty of the orb even if it doesn't have any particular religious significance for me.

I have my the playlist that I entitled "moonmusic" spinning, and I've stolen a few pieces of candy out of the big bag I am taking to school later this week.  It's calm and it's peaceful and it's very nearly perfect.

I wonder why so many of the great old songs had to do with the moon.  Examples right off the top of my head:  "Fly Me to the Moon," "Paper Moon," "Moon River," and "What a Little Moonlight Can Do."  Do we have that many modern moon songs?  Did it lose its mystery and magic for us once we set foot on it?  These songs are still wonderful, still full of an innocence and a hope that I sometimes miss in modern music, especially the hope part.  As long as the singer has the light of the moon and the person s/he loves, everything is going to be okay.  How often do you hear a song where things are that simple, that pure?

Maybe a little more old-fashioned enchantment by the moon wouldn't be a bad thing.

Two Movies

Tonight, I actually watched two films.  I saw both Abraham Lincoln:  Vampire Hunter and Avengers Assemble.  I had wanted to watch both for ages.  How different was my reaction to the two.

Abraham Lincoln was in so many ways a disappointment.  I was surprised to learn that the author of the book was actually in charge of the screen play.  It was so completely unrecognizable as the same work that I just assumed somebody else was in control of it.  I wonder why they went away from the very engaging text.  I cannot say that everything they changed was to make it "easier to film" or something like that, changes that sometimes have to occur because of the limits of the technical aspect of film.  These changes were just....bad changes.  It lessened the power of the story to me.  If the change you make makes it worse, don't change it.

The second movie, Avengers Assemble, was actually much better than I had hoped for.  Again, Joss Whedon turns out an amazing work.  To have that many strong personalities in one picture was a gamble.  But the dynamic on the screen was so close to what they are in the comics, not necessarily close, but working together and forming bonds - against their own will and better judgment - in the process.

It has to be said, too, that at times, I could feel the spirit of Firefly in the movie.  Mal would have been right at home with them, although let's face it, he and Tony Stark would have issues, problems, and miscommunications applenty.  Everything I've ever seen Whedon turn out has that same beautiful strength to it, that same feeling that no matter what our differences are, no matter what our individual quirks, it is always better if we come together.

I really hope they will continue to make more of these films.  They are well-written and great good fun.  Two of my favorite scenes were when Captain America was handing out assignments and he told the Hulk, "You...SMASH."  It was perfect.  Also perfect was the scene in which Loki is running his mouth off and is then picked up by the feet and thrashed back and forth against the floor until he cannot move or speak by the Hulk.  He says something to the effect of, "I am a GOD..." and then he gets his butt handed to him on a platter.  Nice.  A quick extra favorite came when Thor and the Hulk were in a lull in the battle and the Hulk side-punched Thor through a building.  It was snarky, sneaky, and in perfect keeping with everything that had gone on with them previously.  Nice continuity.  Nice characterization.

I will watch Avengers again.  It is pleasant and well done.  As for Abraham Lincoln, if I never see it again, that will be okay.  I am going to go back and reread the book to get that good storyline back in my head.  It's so clouded with crap right now from the movie that I am losing my liking for it.  It was too good a book to let the movie version be the last encounter I have with it.  What a shame when bad films happen to good books.

Songs with Wings

So many of my favorite lines and favorite songs have the image of flight in them.  I started thinking about that today.  Here are a few examples:

• "Oh, had I wings I would fly away and be at rest..."  ~ "Ecstasy," Crooked Still (traditional hymn)
• "On my way to better things / I found myself some wings / Distant roads are calling me...."  ~ "No Time Left for You," The Guess Who
• "My love she's like some raven / at my window with a broken wing."  ~ "Love Minus Zero / No Limit," Bob Dylan
• "One glad morning when this life is done / I'll fly away..."  "I'll Fly Away," traditional hymn
• "Perhaps I'll be a bird one day/ if I'm good enough/ and I'll spread out and fly away/ and give up all this stuff."  "Meheni Rachi," Laura Marling version
• "I'm learning to fly / but I ain't got wings/ coming down is the hardest thing." ~ "Learning to Fly," Tom Petty
• "And when we die/ we say we'll catch some blackbird's wing/ Then we'll fly away to heaven come some sweet bluebonnet spring..." ~ "Gulf Coast Highway," Nanci Griffith
• "...Last night I dreamt that I grew wings/ I found a place where they could hear me when I sing."  ~ "Wings," Josh Ritter

I'm sure there are more, but it's late and I'm tired.  This is all I can think of for now. 

Sleepless in Podunk

Who didn't see it coming?

I avoided it for as long as possible, reading, cleaning, generally putting of my bedtime until it became one of those issues of survival for the following day (as in, go to bed now, or there's no way you'll survive tomorrow).  When I lay down, I knew.  The lights were off, including the annoying glare of my alarm clock/iPhone dock, and still the room was too bright, the waxing moon laying strips of illumination across my bed, across my pillow, across my cheek.

Somebody text messaged me about the time I almost managed to sleep the first time, and after that, I was too hot, too cold, too...something...for at least another hour.  I'd roll over, unsettle a cat or two in the process, try to find a spot the moon wasn't in, and close my eyes.  Then, after minutes that seemed like hours, I'd open them again, stare around the dark corners of my room as if some answer or remedy was hiding there, start the process again.

When I finally did doze off, I had nightmares.  I had suspected that I would.  Everything was in them, travel, my job, my students, friends, stuff I'm reading, stuff I've seen on TV lately.  My whole life was twisted into a massive, screwed up Bosch painting.

Tonight, I need some rest.  Therefore, I'm fortifying myself with chocolate, fluff TV, Jane Austen. Whatever I dream tonight, it needs to be full of light and unicorns.  I'm tired of the other.

Sadness

I went to our church's Homecoming this morning despite the little voice in my head telling me that I should skip it.  I should really learn to listen to that voice.

I'd looked forward to hearing the speaker, a returning member of the church staff from when I was a child.  What he talked about though, just brought me to tears.  He shared from his own story about loss and grief and finally coming to a place where you're not praying for healing but for mercy, and all I could see was my uncle in those last terrible days in the ICU.  It was like I was there standing by the bed he was in when they first brought him, watching him shake and fight for breath.

There is nothing worse than having grief swamp you and being trapped in a public place.  I sat there with tears running down my face, unable to do more than raise my handkerchief to my face occasionally.  What I wanted to do was run out, run away, be somewhere private where I could cry until the pain was gone.  Instead, I had to wait, to listen, to hurt until it was finally done. I put bruises on my hands from holding on so tight so I could maintain until the end finally came.   I fled to my car as soon as I could, sat with my head on the wheel as the first wave of it passed, drove home (probably unsafely) with tear-blurred eyes.  I sat in my driveway and cried and cried until I could start to pull it together again.

It wasn't just my uncle.  How many times have I had to come to that point where I try to accept, to pray that hardest of all the prayers, "Thy will be done"?  There was Grandaddy.  Nana.  Granny.  Peepaw.  Uncle Gary.  All of it, every moment of their fading and loss was like a relentless tide sweeping over me again and again.  How many times will I have to find the strength to pray it again?

I went to eat with Mom.  I came home and read.  I took a nap.  Now I'm up again, and I'm trying to get rid of this lingering sadness.  It just won't go.  I don't know how long it will take to disappear.  I wish I had not gone to have all this stirred up.

Yard Sale

Today I was a part of our community's annual yard sale day.  I haven't done it before because I always felt too bad to fool with it, but what with the cleaning out this summer, I had lots of stuff that would be salable, so I got up at five this morning, drug all my stuff out into the dew-wet yard, and waited for the customers.

I have to admit, the whole process took me back in time.  I used to do this with my Granny all the time.  She would load up her big brown station wagon, or, if we had a lot of stuff, one of the trucks and take her stuff to one of the local areas where people did garage sales on Saturday.  Sometimes, she'd have one here occasionally.  I went as free labor and company.  I spent a number of Saturdays doing that.

I had really forgotten what it was like.  It was icy cold in the pre-dawn darkness this morning. I had to come back inside and put on a sweatshirt.  Then there was the "waiting."  Waiting for people to show up, waiting for them to look over what I had to see if it was of interest, waiting for them to decide if they wanted to buy....

Then there is the mixed pleasure of dealing with the shoppers themselves.  Almost everybody I encountered today was delightful.  Some of them said they come to this sale every year.  I heard one woman talking on the phone saying that she was willing to get a "write up" at work for missing today just to come out to the sales.  It made me think of the way people talk about Canton Flea Market, and I've never really thought about anything related to us in that way.

And then there were the types of people who showed up in my yard.  I had a woman in an honest-to-God clown hat who'd raced home from work to make the sales.  I had a guy who had served as a bar bouncer tell me about the time four women "helped" him spend $800 on his birthday.  I had one of my best friends and her two girls who are always a delight.  The older woman who was buying things to paint for bingo prizes.  Church members.  The guy who unexpectedly turned out to be my cousin.  The many, many people who had known my grandparents and remembered them.

It surprised me how much people liked my ramshackle old house, the ghosts I made that decorate my trees.  I had several people ask me about them and tell me that I should start making them and selling them.  I had thought about that before.  I think I will try it for next year.

The other thing people consistently commented on was the log smokehouse that sits next to my house.  I had several people ask jestingly if I was selling it.  I never think about how unusual it is, I guess.  It has always been a part of this place, of my Granny and Grandaddy's house.  To see it through someone else's eyes was refreshing.

I had two goals this morning.  One was to get rid of a lot of big furniture stuff that has accumulated.  The second was to make enough money to replace my ailing Kindle.  I think I accomplished that.  I didn't get rid of all the stuff, but that was probably unrealistic anyway. From what I remember about yard sales, nobody EVER gets rid of all the stuff...

What I got instead of a clean sweep was a feeling I almost never have here, of being a part of the community.  Since I work elsewhere and didn't go to school here, I usually feel very much like an outsider.  Today, I almost felt like I was a real part of this place, not just a descendant of or a stander-on-the edges.  It was...nice.

Trying It Again

So, I'm trying it again from the iPad. I had a reward certificate from Office Thing, and I cashed part of it in on this wireless keyboard. So far, it seems to be quite the thing. For tasks where I have to type on the iPad, this makes WORLDS of difference. I do hate typing on the flat and unresponsive touch screen, and even though I am a pianist/organist and am used to being flexible with the movements of my hands, some of the ways I have to type on that tiny little keyboard are not comfortable.

Ideally, the iPad would be sitting on the keyboard, but because it has its MOBI case still on it, I've rigged it by leaning it up against the wall behind my desk as I do this post. I don't think this is a lasting solution, but, for the time being, problem solved.

This could enable me to take the iPad more places. I still don't think it will replace my netbook since the netbook will always be able to do things the tablet just won't. It would be nice to be able to take fast notes in meetings, though, or quick edit documents, etc.

And there's always this blogging on the fly that I'm so prone to doing. This gives me another avenue for sharing the humdrum that is my life with the whole world. Now aren't you all glad I spent this money on this? O_o

Ick

Sometimes, air is a precious commodity.  Sometimes, there's just not enough NyQuil in all the world.

It is possible to be so sick that you look at yourself in the mirror and think, "Good God."  I'm there right now.  I feel and look like death warmed over very, very lightly.

I got up this morning with every intention of "powering through it," using my world-famous stubborn and going to school regardless.  I rolled out of my bed at 5, managed not to bump into too many things on the way to the shower, and it was there that I hit my wall.  The water felt so good and moving around felt so wrong.  I had left things yesterday at a point where if I had to be out I could have a fair amount of peace of mind with that decision, so I sat down, made out a lesson plan (during which time I found yet another new level of appreciation for our new textbook), made the necessary calls and texts, walked my dogs, took some pills and went back to bed.

I was unconscious almost immediately, and I stayed that way until 10:30.  Since then, I've been supine and/or asleep on one surface or another most of the day.  I still feel like a truck hit me, but it's getting better.  Tomorrow, I must go back to school.  The stubborn must prevail.  One day to fight off this crap is something I'm proud to say I have grown enough to allow myself.  Two...well...I don't think I'm quite ready for two yet.

Up and Down

It's been a day of mixed feelings.  I woke up with my throat sore and a general sense of ickishness. I stood morning duty, always a joy, and came in to start my day as best I could.  I made a pot of tea and drank it.  Tea always helps me feel better when this stuff comes on, soothes my throat and warms me from within.  I ate about a million hard cinnamon disks.

Then, after first period, two of my students showed up at my door.  Apparently, they had composed an ode in their creative writing class.  It was about me.  It just made my day.  This year, the students are so sweet.  They seem interested in their teachers, their school, and each other.  It's refreshing.  I like that they feel connected enough to all their teachers that they use us as the fodder of their projects.  That the things they say are usually kind things is even better.

I got to hear a colleague get an award today.  I was so happy for her.  Too often, the things my fellow teachers do go unnoticed.  I know she works extra hard for all her students, so to see that recognized was very satisfying.

By the end of third block, though, I was feeling very bad.  I stayed about halfway through fourth and then I went to see my administrator to request early leave.  He let me come home, and I was medicated and asleep by four.  I got up only when my mother came by to check on me and drop off some soup.

As I ate, I fell back to my comfort resources, Downton Abbey and the afghan my grandmother made for me.  I have no idea why I always want to watch Downton when I feel like crap, but there is something about it that soothes me.

I got online to see what was happening in the universe while I watched, and I found that Punch Brothers are releasing a new mini-EP in November, available for pre-order now.  On it is the version of "Another New World" I saw on YouTube.  I am so happy about that.  "Another New World" is one of my favorite songs from Josh Ritter.  It always, always reminds me of Robert Walton in Frankenstein.  Thile's version of it is fantastic.  It never ceased to amaze me how a good song performed by two different excellent artists can come out two kinds of great.  I love that.  There is also, apparently, a version of a Gillian Welch song on this new thing from her latest effort, and that, too, is a thing that makes me happy.  I wish all these people would get together for one giant recording.  Then, even if this crap I have now kills me, I guess I could die happy.  (ha)

Now I'm about to walk my dogs, take more medicine, and go back to bed.  I don't know if I will be able to do school tomorrow or not.  I guess only time and Nyquil can tell.  Regardless, I have one new song now from Chris Thile and a couple of really good things from the day to counterbalance, so I'm not very bad off, right?  (that's my story, and I'm sticking to it...)

Lately

• I've been called a part of the "Fantastic Four."  There's a whole mythology in the making, apparently.  It makes me laugh.  I love it.
• I don't feel very well.  My throat hurts tonight, and I'm feeling decidedly ickish.  I haven't been really sick in a long time, but I have a nasty feeling that my number has come up.
• Every other thing I say is yelling at my dog Chewie for being an idiot.
• Everything - people, animals, the weather - has been trying to kill me as I drive.
• I've been giving thought to trying to take some classes in education technology.  Are there classes in education technology?
• I've become moderately addicted to Clif Bars.
• I found myself cruising the Christmas aisle in Wal-Mart even though we haven't had Halloween yet.  The shiny made me happy.
• I want nothing more than to get away from negative people.  It hurts them; it hurts me.  Why do it?  Either change it, accept it, or get away from it.  Don't keep poisoning the air because of it.
• I keep thinking ITALY.  ABOUT 140 DAYS.
• I am going to bed earlier and earlier.
• I wrote some stuff.
• I have enjoyed sitting in my driveway listening to one more song before I go in the house.  Why it should be that music is so much better in the car in one's own driveway, I cannot say.
• Just at the time it was most necessary, support came from a totally unexpected source.  It made me feel loved and protected.  It made me cry.

There's probably more, but none of it is earthshattering.  I guess I'm just in the school year rut.  That's okay.  There is a beauty to the mundane and routine, too, if you look at it the right way.  "There's nothing either good or bad..."

Etc., Etc., Ad Nauseum

(a list)

• I started teaching my Mythology class today officially.  It is going to be great fun.  I love it, and I think the students will have a good time, too.
• I should be asleep, especially since I haven't gotten much sleep this week, but....
• I feel compelled to write here because...
• I am torn between two emotions.  On the one hand, things are going pretty well.  I have things to look forward to, things that make me happy.  My work life has stabilized.  I should be happy, but....
• There are pockets tucked into hidden corners, the contents of which make me sad and frustrated, mostly I think because...
• I want something I can't have.  Ever.  Shouldn't have.  Am not capable of having even in the smallest measure. Which brings me to my biggest question...
• How do I turn off that wanting?  How do I set it aside and pretend like it's not there?  Will the pretending make it real sooner or later?  If I just close my eyes, plug my ears, ignore it, will it fade away from lack of attention?  Life would be so much kinder if I were just dead inside, mindless and automated.  This constant state of feeling every little bump in the road is too much.  I need better shock absorbers for my soul.  And so, I guess...
• I will just go to bed now.  Sleep and hope not to dream.  Try to focus on the positive.  Try to be a support instead of needing to be supported.  Live up to the adage about giving and receiving.  Close my eyes another day and hope I don't bump into too many things that will bruise me in the process.

Babel

So when your hopes are on fire
But you know your desire
Don't hold a glass over the flame
Don't let your heart grow cold
I will call you by name
I will share your road

MUMFORD & SONS - HOPELESS WANDERER LYRICS 
_______________________

Can I just tell you how much I love this album?  When I first heard it, I thought it was good, but as always with this group, the more I pay attention to the lyrics, the better it gets.  Every time I listen to it, I hear something else that strikes my heart like a hammer shaping steel on an anvil.

Take these from "Ghosts that We Knew":

So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light
Cause oh they gave me such a fright
But I will hold on with all of my might
Just promise me we'll be all right

Ghosts that we knew made us black and all blue
But we'll live a long life
And the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view
And we'll live a long life

I love that love here is something that conquers the ghosts everybody carries around with them.  The love is the light that finally puts the shadows of the past to rest.  I want that.  Oh, how I want that.

Another example:


Now I'll be bold
As well as strong
And use my head alongside my heart
So tame my flesh
And fix my eyes
A tethered mind freed from the lies

And I'll kneel down
Wait for now
And I'll kneel down
Know my ground

Raise my hands
Paint my spirit gold
Bow my head
Keep my heart slow

'cus I will wait, I will wait for you
And I will wait, I will wait for you


~ I WILL WAIT 

The line about using "my head alongside my heart" and having a "tethered mind freed from the lies" is tremendous.  If you read here much at all, you know I am creature of the mind as much as I am of the heart.  The joining of the two here, the grounding of the intellect and the clearing of the vision as a step to get ready for love is so much me.  I also find the idea of "paint[ing] my spirit gold" just beautiful.  The imagery of it fills me with a sense of the mystery and wonder that this particular relationship will bring. This whole idea of putting oneself under control and getting ready for love instead of flying around impulsively is gorgeous to me.

And that seems to be a theme throughout the album.  Not every song has it, but it comes up repeatedly.  It's not something one hears a lot in music today.  Most artists do more of the Carpe Diem "sieze it before it's gone" sort of lyrics.  I find the idea of waiting for something that is real and worthy infinitely more appealing.  It's hopeful that the thing desired is out there somewhere and that until it comes, we need to be working on ourselves with patience.  This is always something I need to hear.

I could quote more lyrics, talk about more of the songs, but I will leave these here and just continue to enjoy the rest without the commentary.

Well....That Was....Unexpected

I'm in the last phases of cleaning out all the things in my grading folder to close out grades tonight, and as I shifted the papers around, I found a typed essay with JUST READ IT!!! on the top mixed in with other assignments.

Puzzled, I glanced at the title, "The Hollow Woman."  Then my blood absolutely froze in my veins.  If you're paying attention to all the players and points around here, then you will know that was the title of a blog of mine early in September.

Once I started to breathe again, I started to read.  One of my students has taken the structure and even some of the words of that entry and sort of....written back to me.  I had to read it twice because my brain stopped working the first time through when I realized whole phrases had been lifted from my own writing.

It's not signed, or rather the typed signature reads only "Anonymous," so I have no idea where it came from.  It's a personal thing, the content of which I won't share here.  Someone perhaps connected to what I was saying in that blog and wanted me to know it.

I am torn between two emotions:  compassion and a wariness that I can't quite shake.  The last time current students of mine found my blog, a couple of really bad things happened.  This doesn't feel like that, though.  And those students weren't writing back, either.

I'm going to take it on faith, then, that this is just somebody who wanted me to hear their response, to know they were listening.  I am going to say, "Likewise."  I hear what you're saying.  I'm sorry it took me so long to find it.  And despite what you may believe, I am sure that nothing in your past would possibly keep you from whatever future you desire.

Monumental

Tonight after dinner, two of my TGC friends and I walked the National Mall.  I have wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial for as long as I can remember.  The last two times I was here, things got in the way of that.  This time, though, I finally got my wish.

I took my time going up the stairs.  Too often when you have waited a long time for something and you get it, it turns out to be somehow less now that it is being checked off your personal "list."  Not so with the Lincoln Memorial for me.  The sight of one of the presidents I admire the most, one of the few I admire at all, sitting there like an American deity enshrined was powerful and moving.  He looked calm, serious, and watchful.  It seemed that he could, at need, rise from his chair and step out to rectify wrongs.  It's probably just as well that he cannot.  I cannot imagine that he would be very pleased with a lot of what he sees....

All of the monuments in the National Mall are beautiful.  They all inspire deep thought and self-examination.  I wonder what it's like to be a person of another nation and stand there.  As I stood at  the base of those pale marble stairs, all I could feel was that sense of belonging, of...American-ness.... for lack of a better term.  It wasn't flag-waiving patriotism or some latter-day superiority.  Rather, as I looked at those huge, strong hands wrapped around the arms of a mighty throne-like chair that Lincoln was some how of me and I of him.  We were connected in a way that was powerful despite having time, gender, and mortality between us.

That sense of the nation being present everywhere was also at two other monuments, the World War II monument and the Vietnam Wall.  The World War II monument was grand, ornate, full of symbolism and power.  Seen in the darkness of this October night, I cannot imagine a more fitting tribute for the generation who fell to defend freedom.

Across the park and lit only by a few soft lights from the path below sits the Vietnam Wall.  In the darkness, it takes you by surprise, the black of its slabs rising suddenly from the black of the surrounding night.  At some point walking along it, I realized there were framed photos lying at the base of it, a couple smiling and feeding each other wedding cake, he in a uniform, she in a white dress and a beehive.  There were letters carefully wrapped in ziplock bags to preserve them against the elements until whatever needed to read them could.  There were bundles of roses, funeral wreaths on stands.

Perhaps this was the most personal place of all for me.  I ran my fingers over the names, not really seeing them, but rather hearing the words of Komunyakaa's "Facing It" and knowing that had things been only a little different, my father's name could be trapped there, too.  There are no fountains or gold stars here.  Instead, there is only the silent dark wall, monument and memory-keeper, eternally strong, eternally grieving.

There is so much history, so much of what defines us as a nation present in those still figures and sculpted stones that line the grassy space at the heart of this city.  I feel connected to the nation again, to the people around me.  Despite our problems in the present, I am reminded of things we have overcome in the past, of the sacrifices made.  Everybody should come here.  Maybe we would be better off if everyone remembered.

'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky

(with apologies to Jimi)

Okay.  So I didn't kiss the sky.  It was just a convenient song lyric.

I did, however, touch a piece of the moon.

That's right.  I said I TOUCHED A PIECE OF THE MOON.

The Air and Space Museum is just amazing.  There are rockets in the entry way along with the nosecone capsules of Gemini and Apollo rockets.  Just standing there under those pitted, curving surfaces was almost religious.  Those tiny little vessels sheltered men who rode fire into space and came back to tell the tale.  The scored and battered heat shielding was like a warrior's shield, each impact and burn mark telling a tale of what might be the grandest of all the battles, man against gravity.  Man against his earthbound existence.

There was a personal touch for me, too.  I have family who worked on those big rockets at Redstone Arsenal.  Somewhere among them, there is a bit of my genes, a bit of my shared DNA there.  Somewhere, my family helped those birds fly free.

I walked from exhibition hall to exhibition hall, looking at a history of man's obsession with flight.  There were a couple of Wright Brothers planes (not the first one), and there was the mighty Spirit of St. Louis.  There was even the Key Brothers' plane, hometown heroes that they are for us.  There were graceful, sleek shapes, more fish of the air than feathered counterparts.  There were deadly machines, beautiful in their stilled aggression and survival of impossible combat.

There was an exhibition in progress dedicated to the Space Shuttles.  I stood with people from many nations and watched that last great flight of Discovery as it hurled itself upwards one last glorious time. As ignition occurred and the blue-clear flames began to push the ungainly white craft up, I had tears in my eyes.  It was beautiful, and so was the collective silence and respect of every person in that room even though it was just a recording.

The theme that ran throughout for me was the undying need we as a race seem to have to escape limits, to go beyond whatever it is that holds us down.  The museum, even though it had machines built specifically for war in it, was an incredibly hopeful and inspiring place.  If we put our mind to it, even the edges of the Earth cannot hold us.

I stood for a long time running my fingertip of the tiny sliver of moon rock embedded in the hard white plastic.  I took the time to focus on it, to try to be sure I would remember that oddly slick marble-like texture.  When I walked away, I had an unconquerable smile on my face.  I had touched the moon.  With both feet standing on the ground, surrounded by flowing tides of speakers of other languages and school field trips, I had traced the surface of another world.

What could ever be impossible now?

Just Another Rainy Sunday

Yesterday, I spent all day cleaning.  I had friends coming over for dinner for the first time in about three years, and of course, that meant a massive purging and cleansing of my whole house.  I didn't mind the work.  It needed doing.  Having them here for the simple meal we shared made it worth it all over again.  It's been far too long since we put aside our daily lives and made time for each other.

Today, I woke at my customary 5:00 to the sweet sound of rain on the roof.  I rolled back over and slept until 8:00.  After that, I moved to the couch and caught up on Warehouse 13 and part of the Doctor Who I have missed.  It was nice to have nothing sitting on my shoulders demanding my attention.  Only grading, that constant burden in my life, remained.

After dinner with my parents, I took a nap.  I felt even then that my head was not as it should be.  I hoped that sleep would reset all the fizzing connections, but when I got up, the pain was threatening like the rumble of thunder from a storm sliding over the hills toward me.  I walked the dogs with a Maxalt in my pocket, trying to figure out whether or not I would take it and the inevitable side effects that always accompany it.

When the pain started jumping up and down with its delicate little icepick spikes, I relented and took the pill.  Now, I'm just floating.  Most of the pain is gone, but I just want to sleep.

So I'm listening to my two new albums (I got the new Avett Bros and the new Mumford for a payday treat), and I'm trying to focus enough to plow through some of these papers.  Hopefully tomorrow won't be a repeat of today.  Migraines at home are one thing; migraines at school are altogether another.

That Which Was Lost

Yesterday, as I was putting up my October bulletin board, I found something I thought was gone.  It is the small Peter Rose raven I bought last year at Chimneyville.  I had looked everywhere for it, opened and emptied all my drawers where I hide things away during the summer, dug to the back of all the stuff I have in my big locking cabinet.  Every so often, I'd have a flash of some new place to check, but it was never there.

Every time I looked, my heart got a little sadder.  It seemed to be the last dose of crap from last school year, the last kick in the side, the last indignity.  I had loved that little bird from the first moment I saw it among its larger brethren in Jackson, and to find that it was gone was terrible.  The thought that someone would take it was of course a million times worse.  I couldn't figure out why anyone would take it.  It isn't flashy.  It isn't fancy.  Unless you know something about pottery, you probably wouldn't get it at all.  It wasn't like it was something electronic that could one could hock.

I had remembered that I had put away as one of the very last things I had done when I was shutting my room down on that terrible last day of last year, but it was in none of the places I usually kept things.  When I opened a random filing cabinet drawer yesterday, though, it was sitting there as if it were only waiting for me.  I picked it up and held it for a minute.  The feeling of finding it was sweet.

It isn't the only lost thing I've found lately.  I had lost something far more important than a mere object.  Last year, I lost the feeling of connection to my students and purpose for my job.  I felt bad all the time, off balance, struggling.  My relationship with my students is critical, and for whatever reason, it just wasn't as strong as it has been previously.

This year's class is different, though.  They are sweet and thoughtful.  Yesterday, we studied "Homage to the Empress of the Blues," and as a part of the assignment, they created their own
 homage to someone.  Four of the groups did teachers, three of my good friends and respected colleagues...and me.  I almost cried.

They say the relationship piece is the most important part of the teacher-student interaction.  What they don't tell you is how important it is on our side of the desk, too.  The amount of sheer internal power we have to pull every day to care for all the needs of our students, to be enthusiastic about our material even when we feel sick or weary ourselves, to ignore the outside distractions that constantly surround us, is something that I'm not sure people who haven't been in education understand.  When we feel that we're fighting our students, that sheer apathy reigns, it makes it extremely hard to refresh that inner spring.  Without something to breathe life into it somehow, it is only a matter of time until it runs dry altogether.

Which is basically where I was when this year began.  The events that closed out last year hurt me.     Even though there had been bright spots in that year, there had been so much badness that went with it.  I didn't really know what to think about this year, only that I had a hope and a prayer that it wouldn't be more of the same.  It really isn't.

That feeling when you find a thing that was precious to you and had gone missing is full of joy, surprise, and relief.  It doesn't matter if that thing is something you can lay your hands on or not.  When a loss is healed, when restoration comes, peace comes with it.

Mouse Shower

(which, by the way, I think would be a totally awesome band name)

This morning, I had more trouble than usual focusing and waking up.  I stumbled into the shower, and turned the water on.  As I was washing my hair, I glanced into the corner under the shower curtain, and I saw something odd, a grey spot that shouldn't be there.

I paused, blinked, looked again, and the spot moved.  This is not comforting when you are in as vulnerable a position as you are when you're in the shower.  Looking through the distortion of the clear liner, I figured out that what I was looking at was a small field mouse.

I decided at that point to get out of the shower.

I wasn't scared, but I kept having this image of the mouse running up my leg trying to get away from the soap and water.  I grabbed the big plastic cup I keep in the bathroom for rinsing the sides of the tub when I scrub it, and I looked around for something thin but strong and waterproof to slide under it to form a trap.  The only thing I could think of was my Cricut mat.  I took it, placed the cup gently over the unmoving mouse, slipped the mat under it, and I hustled him outside to a less-watery freedom.  Then I came back to the shower to enjoy rodent-free cleanness.

Any day that starts out with a mouse in your bath probably isn't going to be the best.  It really lived up to its start.  The polite, damp, little mouse was actually a high point.  That should tell you everything else about today that you need to know.

I'm the Woman Who...

• frequently looks at guys with hot cars and thinks, "Give me your keys and get lost."
• is made happy by a well-made bulletin board.
• loves you.  (sorry.  the allusion/song reference just felt necessary.)
• just spent about 30 minutes cleaning stuff off her iPhone so it had enough space left to upgrade the iOS.
• can't sleep because I have nightmares.
• wears bunches of rings and doesn't really care what you think about that.
• is going to have Froot Loops right now.  Without milk.  Just because.
• prefers to watch all TV through my Roku because I can get instant gratification and no commercials.
• is going to DC in about 10 days.
• has a sack of grading to do.
• is still eating Froot Loops.
• really does miss you, probably.  No song allusions at all.
• is going to bed now.  To sleep.  (to sleep perchance to dream...aye, there's the rub)
• cannot avoid a Hamlet reference.
• is now done.

Bad Moon Risen

(Yeah.  I know that's not the title of the song.  Still.)

Last night, I got to bed late because I stayed up working on stuff.  When I finally did get to bed, I had nightmares all night.  They were the horrible kind, the wake you up, but not quite enough to make you understand everything that jarred you wasn't real.  There aren't too many places worse than that grey fuzzy place where you still feel sick and sad, where you're still grieving or afraid.  I would wake up, slowly focus on the spill of moonlight moving across the bed, find my alarm clock, and try to roll over again.

I was off my game all day today from lack of sleep.  I hope tomorrow will be a better day.  Maybe tonight the devil moon will leave me alone.

AFAR magazine

About three months ago, I opened my mailbox to find a copy of a magazine I really don't remember asking anybody for, AFAR.  Just the cover grabbed my attention.  The photography on the front was spectacular.  There were the standard little article blurbs there that caught my eye, too.  An article about traveling cross-country in an Airstream.  Travel tips for South Africa.  I had it open in the car and sat reading it in my driveway before I ever even took it inside the house.

As I read, I found that they have an app and a website.  I played with those, and they're great.  I can see some classroom applications for them and tons of personal ones.  I uploaded some trip pictures from various places I've been to their photo feed.

Since then two more issues have come.  I don't have many magazine subscriptions.  I only subscribe to Mental Floss and Real Simple.  This one, though, I want to keep coming.  It has high end and more realistic tips and travel helps.  I have never seen anything like it.  It is for people who love to go, even if they can only do it from the comfort of their favorite reading spot.  It has inspired me and brought out all that old urge that's never very far from the surface to throw all my crap in a box and run away.

While I can't do that for long periods of time yet, this lovely publication is at least keeping that flame burning.  It makes me remember how good I feel when I am somewhere else, soaking in all the mind-boggling, soul-healing beauty that is our world.  It makes me dust off the camera and look for somewhere good to go point it.

For a slim volume of pulp and printer's ink, I'd say this is no minor accomplishment.  Kudos to the team that puts this thing together.  Thanks to whomever saw to it that I'm getting it now.  It was something I did not know existed but that I needed terribly all the same.

Italian Dreaming

It's just possible that I might be going back to Italy.  Three years after the first trip, I have the chance to go again....if everything works out just right.  I will know later this week, but just the thought of being able to go back thrills me.

This trip will include Rome, Florence, and Venice.  I loved Rome last time.  Florence, a day trip, was spectacular.  I desperately wanted more time there.  Venice has been a dream of mine for a long time.  It seems too beautiful and delicate to be a real place.  I want to see it with my own eyes, maybe fall into a canal or something, and know that it's possible.

Even though there is still a detail waiting to be finalized for me to be sure of the trip, it hasn't stopped me from looking online, from downloading the free editions of the Lonely Planet guides for Florence and Venice.  There are so many things I want to see again.  There are so many things I want to see for the very first time.

I have a "real" camera now.  Every time I think of how glorious everything I saw was last time, I get even more excited by thinking about going back and getting to capture it well this time.  My little point-and-shoot that I carried before was in no way capable of getting the kind of detail shots I like.  It recorded the big stuff, but it's the little things that are so fantastic in Rome and Florence.  I am going to need a BIG memory card if I do get to go.

The most exciting thing to me, though, about this trip is that my best friend is probably going to get to come along.  I know that Italy, particularly Florence and Venice, has been a dream of hers for a long time.  I remember her talking about it back in college.  To be able to go and see her get to experience what for her will be both her first time out of the country and one of her life-list goals at the same time will be awesome.

It will also be fantastic on my end because I'll finally have somebody along who thinks like me.  Sometimes, when you're stuck with a group, it's hard to be alone inside it.  This happens to me frequently and I just roll with it.  To be in an incredible place with somebody I've known quite literally since my first day of kindergarten is going to be just that much greater an experience.

I'm really hoping this comes together.  It's one of those things that I'm fairly sure about, but that I can't quite believe is actually going to happen.  Maybe all the stars will align one more time, and I'll get this great good thing.

Pro-Crastination

So I have this ginormous project due.  Tomorrow.  Guess how close to being finished with it?

Yeah.  That's about right.

Sigh.  Procrastination has come back around to bite me once again.

There's this block that jumps up when I have a lot of something, anything to do.  There's this stubborn little streak inside me that absolutely refuses to start it.  I know that I must do it.  I know it's not going anywhere.  Despite that, I still find inane tasks to fill the time as though some magic fairy is going to swing down from a star and make it all disappear.

I'll be up until the crack of dawn as a result.  You would think that as old as I am, I would have learned by now, but I am truly a professional procrastinator.  It's never as bad as I think it's going to be once I begin.  So.  I guess I should probably get on that.  Soon.  Really soon....

Pain

Headache.  Day off.  Headache.

This is my life right now.  I don't know why.  Maybe it's the weather.  Maybe it's the stress.  Maybe it's just crap to be me sometimes.

I get so tired of hurting.  On the Topamax, off it, it doesn't seem to matter.  Why can't I just be a normal person?  The kind who doesn't feel like her head is going to explode every time there's a flashing light on a cop car or a thunderstorm blowing in.

Last night, it hit me as I was preparing to play for the revival service.  All the lights were too bright.  I toughed it out, though.  I finished the congregational hymns and then I stumbled out and drove myself home.  The whole way, I drove about 35 mph, saying, "I can do this.  I can do this.  I can do this...."  I hope it would have made Mrs. Sarah, my music teacher, proud.

Some of my most immediate stress ended today.  I still have a couple of more things to resolve, but maybe if I can get all this stuff cleared up, my head won't continue to impede my living.

Inhumanity

"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity." ~ George Bernard Shaw

Photographs

Yesterday, I was fooling around with my computer and my iPad when I ran across old folders of photos.  Since I was in the process of transferring a few from the netbook to the iPad, I wound up scrolling through images I haven't seen in a long, long time.

I looked at places, faces, and events from my past.  I also looked at the dates.  Can it really have been as long ago for some of those things as that number says?  It doesn't seem possible, to be honest.  Yet, I know it must be so because as I looked at some of them, little details that had become blurred came back into sharp focus.

After all of that, at some point in the day, I checked in on FaceBook.  I'm not on there even half as much as I used to be.  I get notifications to my phone, and I find that I'm just not as interested in what happens there unless somebody close to me is having a problem.  I check in once or twice a day now to catch up instead of leaving it running as I used to.  I don't know what that says about my interest in my fellow man, but there you have it.

As I was on FB yesterday, I saw a photo of someone I haven't seen in a long time.  Almost the only contact I have with him these days is through the random FB mention.  He doesn't post much.  I suppose he's too busy with his job and his obligations.  He never has been one for FB, less now than ever.

I looked at the image and thought about how much he's changed, how much he's still the same.   Memories of how we met and the time we spent together made me smile.  His wry sense of humor and quick wit came back to me.  I wished once more that we weren't so far apart, that I could see him again somehow.

One of the crappiest parts of getting older, it seems to me, is that paths tend to split and people who are dear to us tend to wind up going in directions we can't follow.  Even though we intend to "stay in touch" and hold on, life intrudes, and the best of intentions all too often fails.

I think I read an article somewhere talking about how FB completely destroyed the natural life cycle of human relationships.  It said that in previous generations, it was completely normal for people to pass in and out of one's life and be "lost," that every friendship had a life cycle.  If I remember correctly, it sort of accused FB of hindering the rightful deaths of these connections.  At the time I read it, I hated it.  Who has the right to say how long or to what degree a person is important to you?  Should there be an expiration date on how much you care for someone?

Even though I haven't seen him in the real world for a long time, it still brings me joy to know he's out there doing well (better than well, actually).  For some reason, it's a hopeful thing.  We will probably continue to e-talk and make plans to see each other that fall through.  I will continue to be proud to know him from this distance that separates us.  Maybe we will never see each other again except for the images on an online social networking site.  I can't say.

All I know is that seeing that picture made me miss him all over again.

The Fun Just Never Ends

I woke up this morning to a really horrid stench.  I knew what it was, but I couldn't figure out where it was.  As I got ready, I looked everywhere for the source.  It wasn't until I went to the back to walk my dogs that I found it.  Chewie's normally snow-white self was covered in nastiness.  He'd had attacks of diarrhea in the night, and he, his cage, and even the wall behind his crate had paid the price.

What started as a part of my daily routine, that last quick walk with the dogs in the morning, turned into a rushed festival of unpleasantness.  I took Chewie out, watched him struggle with the sickness, brought him back inside and led him to the bathroom.  When I closed the door, he started getting nervous.  Somehow I manhandled him into the tub and bathed him.  This is such a calm description for such a frantic episode.  He stood drooping and miserable while I washed him.  He tried to get out, I grappled with him, he slipped and fell.  Meanwhile, the time I needed to leave for school crept ever closer.

I dragged the pan at the bottom of his crate out to wash it with the hose, and Mom arrived, coming to the rescue.  She sent me to school, and finished things up.  She checked in on Chewie to make sure he wasn't dehydrating himself through being ill.

I worried about him all day.  By the time I got home, Mom had been forced to wash him twice using the hose outside.  I took him for one last walk, and no sooner had I stepped out the door than he pulled the retractable leash out my hands and took off.  I ran to the house and got my flashlight, and then I found myself walking down this deep woods path in the uneasy quiet of a Mississippi night.  I heard all kinds of things rustling, but none of them were Chewie.

I came back to the house and was about to go to the cut-over across the road when I saw his white form glowing in front of me.  I jumped out of the car and gently called him until he finally came to me, leash dangling.  He put his head on my knees and just leaned.

I need tomorrow to be less adventure.  I'm not sure I can stand otherwise.

A Passing Thought

Today I wanted to talk to someone quite a lot.  I woke up sick with a migraine looming, but oddly, this person was so much on my mind.  And so there they stayed all day.  Granted, I was so busy today fighting off the sick, dealing with the usual assortment of classroom circus acts, and flailing hither, thither, and yon to get all my responsibilities met that I had few free moments for it stick its hand up and wave for attention.  In the relative stillness of my car on the way home, though, that want came back.  So far, I've ruthlessly ignored it.  I've watched a movie, fought with a laptop, downloaded some music, updated a few files, toyed with my Cricut.  Now it's time for bed.  The desire to talk to that person is shrugging its shoulders, folding its hands, and resting its case.  Maybe I should have intruded into their day.  I couldn't make myself believe it was a good thing to do, though.

Yeah.

Sometimes life is a lot more ridiculous than it looks from the outside.

Captain America

(in which I watched a movie)

I seem to remember a TV show for Captain America when I was little.  It was of that Wonder Woman variety, super cheesy I'm sure, but I have always remembered the shield.  I don't remember anything else but that.  Therefore, unlike most superhero films of recent years, I really didn't know what to expect.

I was charmed.

I shouldn't be surprised by that.  Right now, whoever is controlling those Marvel films is turning out some very engaging stuff.  I really and truly love the Iron Man films.  Part of that, granted, is because of Robert Downey Jr., an actor whom I find charming, intelligent, and humorous, but the writing is fun, the plot is fast-paced, and the characters have a depth that I respect.

There was something more with Captain America, though.  Maybe it's that they focused so much on him as a developing individual rather than just, "Oh, hey.  Lookit.  I can has powers now."  The powers were important, but the film was much more about just how far he would go, just how much he was willing to give up to do the thing he believed was right.

I can hear you muttering "Boy Scout" behind your hands, and you're right.  He was one.  But, as I tell my seniors every year, our epic heroes/comic book superheroes tell us a lot about what we value, what we as a culture think is most important.  He had strength without arrogance, a willingness (even a drive) to help his fellow man, badassedness and total fearlessness on the field of battle, a background rich in technology and gadgets, a history of overcoming and rising from humble origins, and (and here I feel a blush stain my maidenly cheeks) physical beauty.  I think that's pretty much the catalog of virtues from America.  The only bell he didn't ring was super intelligent, but I think Iron Man does that about eight times anyway, so Captain America doesn't have to worry about it so much.

As far as the superhero movies go, I will have to watch it again.  That is high praise for any film, really, since I don't even half-watch most of them the first time.  It was nice to have the mythos of that character re-examined and to refresh hazy memories.  Maybe someday they will reboot Wonder Woman in the same way.

What's Going On

A list.  It's all I am capable of.

• Migraine.  Big, bad, nasty one.  It caught me in Wal-Mart, doubling my misery, and then I had to wait at the checkout while a manager was called repeatedly to come and open a security box for an ink cartridge.  I finally left the cartridge and fled to the car for my medicine.
• iPad.  I love it more and more.  It lets me do so many things on the move in my classroom.  Today, I used it to show parents grades on my desktop and to adjust things by way of makeup grades and so on as needed.  There are some distinct limitations to what I can do on it, but it's a great tool.  Plus...
• Doodle Jump and Fruit Ninja.  God help me.  I can't stop playing them.  
• Fall Weather.  I have the windows open and the attic fan on.  It's delightful.  I got to wear my new Birki clogs, and today I even put on a scarf.  I hope this weather sticks around awhile.
• Eggplant Parmesan.  I came home from a long day of school followed by Parent Teacher Conferences, and I was thinking in the simplest possible terms of supper:  peanut butter and jelly.  I opened the freezer to look for an option, and there, waiting like a surprise gift, was a frozen eggplant parm I'd forgotten I'd bought as a payday splurge.  It was doubly good for that.
• DVR.  Last night's headache made me forget about one of the few TV shows I watch with regularity, Warehouse 13.  It occurred to me on the way home today that I'd missed it.  Then it came to me.  Even though I was out of it doesn't mean my DVR was.
• Well-groomed lawn.  It's a simple and cheap pleasure to walk through my yards now that the grass has been cut.  It's so pretty that I don't know why I don't do it more often.
• Tired.  So achingly, miserably tired.  Doesn't matter how much I sleep.  It's still there.  I'd like to curl up in ball in the middle of my bed with the cool air washing over me and sleep for days.
• Busy. Meetings and tests and plans, oh my.  Meetings and tests and plans, oh my.  (And me without any red sparkly shoes....)   

A few more stubborn minutes of Downton Abbey, and that's all for me for tonight.

The Hollow Woman

We are the hollow men
    We are the stuffed men
    Leaning together
    Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
    Our dried voices, when
    We whisper together
    Are quiet and meaningless
    As wind in dry grass
    Or rats' feet over broken glass
    In our dry cellar
~ "The Hollow Men" - T.S. Eliot
_______________________

Today was Baby Dedication at church.  Even though my cousin's youngest was in the lineup for the service, I had not planned to go.  Despite my mother's wistful disapproval, I was firm about skipping it, meeting up with everybody afterward to go out to eat.  I needed not to be there.

Of course, that's not the way it worked out.

I got a text about ten til ten telling me that I was needed to play for the service, so I gathered my fortitude and headed out.  I managed to put together some music, and it went okay.

I sat on the organ bench watching as the babies and their parents came forward, and I thought about my own life and my own situation.  I couldn't help it.  It wasn't about me, but it made me think about things I try desperately not to drag out into the light very often.

I am constantly surrounded by children, by families.  How is it I am not going to have that?  The most basic of single-celled organisms can reproduce, yet I won't.  Butterflies in the yard, crows in the treetops, they manage to find some other that they fit with, become a part of a pair.  What is wrong with me that I cannot?

And yet, I can't seriously feel as though I should be searching for anybody. I can't seriously feel that it has the least possibility of working, barring a miracle.  I'm too solitary, too...odd, too set in my own ways, too demanding, and then there's the always present whisper that I probably cannot have children.  How could I stick somebody with all of that?  Who would possibly want it?

So I walk around feeling hollow.  I feel somehow less real than other people, somehow like I am just a simulacrum of a woman, something that can trick the eye from a distance but is just paste and paint when viewed too close, something that can be taken out for emergencies and then neatly folded and put away again when it's not needed.

I can't say that I'm wildly unhappy.  I don't feel deeply depressed.  It's just days like today pile on top of me like that old Puritan punishment of pressing, one and another and another, eventually making it hard to breathe.

On the Go

This is the first post I've tried to write on my new iPad. To be honest, although I adore this thing, typing quickly on it is going to take more than a little adjustment. Part of the problem, of course, is that this is still an iPhone app. Apparently, not enough people want to blog like this for Blogger to feel like they need to improve/expand their app. I wish they would. I Dan already tell you that if it stays like it is, I will be using my regular computer for this instead of the iPad.

I think that's something of a shame, too, since blogging on the go seems like a natural part of what the iPad should be about. I would be far more likely to write more lately if this were a little more user-friendly.

There's more I want to record; I haven't been writing much because I've been busy. I will wait until I'm back home to do it, though. This is wearing me out.

Road Trip

Despite overcast skies, my friend C. and I took off toward West Point early Saturday morning just as we'd planned.  It was time for our annual trip to Prairie Arts.  It sprinkled a little on the way, but the storms that had been hanging around in Isaac's wake held off.

When we got to West Point, we went to the Pizza Inn, our traditional lunch stop during the trip.  I don't know what they do to their pizza, but it's some of the best restaurant pizza I know of.  As we ate, we talked.  For the second time in as many weeks, just how much of my friends' lives I am unaware of was brought home to me.  I've had two conversations with two people I dearly love and rarely see, and I've learned things that I would have loved to have been able to help them with.

And maybe, truly, they weren't the kind of things somebody could have helped with, ultimately, but I hate the thought that people I love were going through challenging times, and I could not give some kind of aid, even if it was just a listening ear or a silly distraction.  We are all so far away from each other:  in geography, in life stage, in so many ways.  However, just knowing they went through these things, even though some of them were years ago and far away, made me feel like a bad friend.

That's another conversation that has been much on the lips of those I'm around lately, the disconnectedness from each other we feel, the fact that we only know about each other's lives from FaceBook updates.  Everyone has expressed a desire to "do better," to see each other more, to have conversations, not just "like" statuses.  Are we finally at a point now where we will be able to do what we say?

I get so lost inside my job.  I have friends who are also teachers, who live a million miles away, who are trying to meet the demands of college life or young children.  Can we find a way to get over all the hurdles and be closer?  Is it unrealistic even to want that?  Or is it ultimately a matter of priorities and effort?

I am hopeful that it is the latter.  My friends genuinely matter to me.  I think it's time they started being more of a list item than an afterthought.

The best part of the trip yesterday was the talking.  We saw fantastic things at Prairie Arts, ate at Dooey's in Starkville, enjoyed a good bookstore and coffee, but the most important part was that sense of reconnection.  I want to find a way to make it last.  I don't know how to go about it,  but it's time to try something.

Quickly

There's more to tell, but I have to go to church in a minute to play for night services.  Today, I decided that I needed a dedicated workspace for school stuff.  I am tired of working in my lap or at my dining table.  I packed myself up in my little blue car after lunch with Mom and Dad and went to my favorite junktique.  I pretty much knew what I was looking for, but I never expected to find it so fast.  I got a small enamel-top table with a drawer, and then as I made a quick circuit of the huge place to make sure I didn't see something better suited, I ran across a wooden captain's chair somebody had painted a bright, cheerful teal.  The color matches the speckled edge of the enamel table, so I grabbed it, too.

There was a moment of concern when it came time to load the table in my car, but again, it managed to hold more than it probably really ought to be able to hold, and I came home.  I put my new small metal donkey (from Prairie Arts yesterday) and assorted other desk things on it including a good work light.  I've been grading papers there ever since, of course, with plenty of feline assistance.  I can finally get things done here at home.

I have more to tell about the past few days, but right now, I have to go try to get meaningful noise out of a musical instrument.