Devolution

I had the most disgusting experience today. I had turned in a paper for my Hemingway class, and I knew it was not what it should have been when I did. There was something nagging at me about it, and I stayed after class to talk with my professor about it.

Once he started pointing out ways to make it better, it suddenly clicked with me what the problem was. I was looking at a high school paper, not a graduate student's paper, not a paper that is up to what I used to write. Apparently, I have become what I teach: a three-point thesis and a military outline structure.

I have devolved without knowing it. I feel ill. If I can get my kids to write at that level, I'm happy, but only because they have a good basic grounding from which to grow into that subtle, organic style that is a mature form of writing. From myself, I expect much more. Granted it's been a long time since I wrote about literature, but that the basic mechanics have so invaded my writing as to become obtrusive is unacceptable. It's like seeing the mechanism behind the illusion.

I don't know if I can get back to what I used to have. Maybe I've been hamstrung by my own teaching. All I know is that I have a week to see if I can refine this graceless lump into something with some elegance, and am definitely going to try.

I Heard the News Today

After taking a vocabulary test today, one of my students told me that a former student had been shot and killed over the weekend. All that potential wasted, cast aside like something of no value. I still can't believe, with the typical denial of the living, that anyone that young and alive can be dead in a box.

He was never much on school. He refused, albeit politely, to even do things that would have been simple for him. He had no interest in it, and always struck me as a person simply humoring another until it was okay to leave. I wish so much that something we had done had caught his attention. Maybe if anything had, all that latent talent wouldn't be gone now. Maybe he would have chosen a path other than the one that led him to a grave before he was 25.

I wrote a poem for him. It's the first time I've been moved to words in a long time. I think it will be my entry in this year's competition. If it wins, I think that would be a fitting tribute to him.

Birthday Surprise

I had the nicest surprise today. My fourth period class brought me cupcakes, dill pickle chips, and PEZ. One of my coworkers gave me a funny card. It was nice to be noticed.

Most of my birthdays are terrible, but this one is looking better than most. In addition to that little lift, I also got news that one of my best friends who has been "expecting" for what I'm sure seems to her like forever had her baby this morning early. I know it's weird, but I think it's neat that her baby and I will have the same birthday. If she's lucky, the little one won't grow up to be anything like me. :)

Rat Rescue

Of all the things I didn't think I'd be doing tonight, rescuing mice is probably at the top of that list. Dillon and Pearl managed to corner one, but Dilly is still so young that she's not quite sure what to do with wiggly things. They chased it under the desk in my living room, and then Pearl grabbed it in her teeth and took off to the sun room growling like some sort of feral creature instead of the overfed lapcat she is.

I ran to the kitchen, got my heavy leather work gloves from my junk drawer, raced back, and grabbed up the mouse. Pearl, needless to say, was most displeased. There was blood on the mouse, but it was still kicking, so I hope she didn't mortally wound it. I took it outside and dropped it into some tall grass away from the house.

I have rat poison in my attic and under my house, so I guess this action was a bit paradoxical, but I just couldn't stand the thought of the cats torturing it to death. It probably ran right back under the house and proceded to chew up my phone lines again in vengence, and Pearl is currently in full savage-cat hunting stalk looking for another one, but at least I feel like I did the right thing.

Got One!

I finally got one! My eBay luck changed and I beat out the persistant bidder siempredolcevita who was buying up every chenille spread offered. This is my birthday present to myself. I love the color combination, and there is something oddly comforting about just lying on top of it. It's another thing somebody made with his (or more likely, her) own hands, and it's a piece of American history as well. I wonder how many people have spreads like this one shunned and tucked away in their closet tops. Maybe they aren't the current vogue, and I'm sure that the IKEA crowd would rather die than have one, but it suits my vintage life and tastes perfectly. I am looking forward to sweet dreams guarded by brilliant peacocks in the nights to come.

Bizarre-Land

Yesterday, there was a memo from October in my mailbox with passages highlighted that concerned regulations against teachers wearing jeans at school.

I was so hacked off. It must be admitted that I am occasionally guilty of wearing a really dark blue pair of jeans with my high school sweatshirt because I can't seem to find any navy pants when I need them. However, I also live, sweat, bleed, and die my job, so I don't think that one dark blue pair of jeans is a heinous sin.

I gave the sheet to my department head who took it to my principal, and guess what? It didn't come from the administration at all. Hmm..... curious....

Apparently, we have someone childish and silly on the hall. Joy-O. It's not enough that I deal with teenagers everyday; now one of my co-workers has devolved into one, too.

I have a pretty good idea who's responsible, and now I can just laugh at it. It's not going to affect me. I have too much to do to play juvenile games, but I have to say, it made yesterday really bizarre. As long as my administrators are happy with what I do, petty children in adult bodies can find anatomically improbable places to put such little missives.

And Then There Are Other Days

....the days I hate this job more than I can bear. Today is one of those days. My second period class apparently cheated on the makeup test I gave them, and I just want to put all my belongings in a box and go home permanently.

I hate dishonestly in general, but something about this just galls me. First, there's nothing that can be done. Since I personally didn't see it, there is no action I can take. Second, after confronting one of the alleged cheaters and having her lie right in my face, I am so physically sick that I need to go throw up.

I know I am not the arbiter of their morality, but I find it so offensive. Then adding the lie to it, I don't know how I'm going to be able to look at that class again. To know that they are cheating liars, to know that every single moment of every single class they lie and cheat, is almost too much for me to stand.

I wish I could just shrug my shoulders and say, "Oh well." I wish it didn't matter. It does, though, and today, I feel like the weather, gray, dull, cold, and lifeless.

I'm sick of this. There has to be something better, something worthy out there somewhere. I give too much, I put too much of myself into this teaching for things like this not to matter to me.

Maybe I'll go back overseas. I loved that. I was happy there. Maybe I could be again. Right now, I cannot believe that anything I do here matters anymore. That's not a feeling I can stand.

Oddness

At church tonight, our pastor was reminding the youth and their parents about summer's camp plans, and he mentioned the fact that Gulfshore, the Baptist camp on the coast where I spent almost every summer, was completely gone. I knew it had taken massive damage from Katrina, but I thought some part of it had survived. I thought I was going to cry. One more splinter of my childhood gone forever, I suppose.

Life has been odd lately. I have missed two days in my classroom because of an editing job for some stuff at school. Just being at school in my room without my students has been really weird. I've missed them. Even though they quite frequently wear me out, their absence was uncomfortable. I hope the job I did was useful, though.

Men have been odd lately, too. It seems that the interesting ones I meet are all GEMINI -- gay, engaged, married, insane, or not interested. This town and what passes for its dating pool constantly depress me. As Madame De Stael said, "The more I see of men, the more I like my dog."

Hopefully this week things will stabilize a little. I have a lot of Hemingway I've got to read for one of my night classes, and an assignment for the other, so I guess I need to get to it.

Elvis

I am on a serious Elvis kick right now. I took a three-CD set and selected twenty something songs to make one portable CD that I've been driving around to non-stop for the past week. I think it's probably impossible to be sad listening to "Return to Sender" and "You're So Square." I have found myself arriving at school in a much better mood since I've been listening to Elvis on the way in.

The 3 CD set was chronological, so the collection I made goes from early to late, and it's interesting to hear the changes in the music over time. I added two remixes, one for "Rubberneckin'" and one for "A Little More Action," that I downloaded from Wal-Mart's website.

Elvis' voice, and this is probably a "duh" statement, is such a pleasure to listen to. When you start stacking him up against most of the so-called singing stars around today (for some reason, Justin Timberlake and his pale, weak self comes to mind), it really starts to make you wonder just how these people got recording contracts. I guess though, that's probably a little unfair. After all, there's only ever been one King. I am going to continue to enjoy his gorgeous voice in my commuting.

Golden Light

There was a golden light as I was driving to Jackson this morning for Tech Prep training. It was like the whole world was inside an amber ball. This light is the light of my dreams, the good ones anyway. It's one of the things I missed the most when I was in other countries and states. Nowhere but Mississippi has that delicate spun-honey light. Sometimes, in the summer, it looks like a tangible thing, like something you could carve or mold. I love it when it slants through the trees late in the evening, bars of warmth, columns of the sky. It's one of the few things that makes the endless back-and-forth of the interstate a pleasure, and watching it bathe everything in glory this morning helped balance out what turned into a very pointless day.

Ella

I got a new CD Thursday from Amazon. It's called Ella for Lovers and is a part of Verve's massive re-releasing of their catalog. It's great. Of course, with her voice, how could it not have been?

I've loved Ella Fitzgerald for years. She was one of the first jazz vocalists I discovered. Her voice has a beauty of feeling that informs every note. I imagine each sound like a perfectly-cut jewel shimmering in the air.

I have probably five cds of just her works from various periods and labels. Of course, one of my very favorites is the collection I have of her and Louis Armstrong, but this disc is a good addition to my collection of her works, too, because so many of the songs are simply her, a piano, and perhaps a guitar. It's good rainy-day music, and since today is another rainy Sunday, I'm looking forward to a pleasant day of reading 1984 and listening to her heavenly voice.

The Missing Harness

This evening, Roux showed up at the door to be let in for the evening, and I opened the door for her and Yelldo. I fed them both, and when she came back in the living room afterward, I noticed that her harness was gone. She had no form of identification or restraint at all.

I could swear that she had it on when she came in. How could I have missed the fact that the brightly-striped and jingly harness was not on the big red dog? However, apparently, I saw what I was used to seeing instead of what was really there.

I walked down the road and then back up the pasture in search of it and went over all the yard. No sign of it. I suppose she lost it somewhere in the woods in the hour and a half she was outside without me.

It was just weird. I jokingly half-suspected my mom came down and stole it because she hated the stripes so much. She thinks the only two colors for a dog collar are brown and black. I prefer more colorful options.

Anyway, tomorrow begins the long haul toward the AP test and the end of the school year, so I'm going to put the mystery to the side, watch a little more tv, and get some rest. Maybe the harness will show up again somewhere in the future.

New Year's Eve

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves. ~Bill Vaughan

I don't know which category I fall into in regard to the above quote. There is a bit of both in me, I think.

I watched the last light of the last day of 2006 fade from the trunks and boughs of the pines on top of the hill near my house. It seemed to cling just a little longer than usual, as if the year was hesitant to pass on, as if it would stay now that its time has come.

Yesterday and last night, torrential rains swept through Podunk. The rain was sufficient to set dry streams running and to cut shallow rivulets through my driveway. As I listened to it pounding the metal roof in the back of the house, I kept thinking that it was the hand of God washing away the old year, cleaning the slate, as it were.

2006 was not a particularly good year for me. Those of you who have been reading me for a long time may have noticed the shift of topic and tone in my blog; of course, with the infrequency of my blogging, the change may not be apparent. It's been so much easier to stick with the trivial or not to write at all. If you know me personally, you may have noticed that my usual taciturn nature has been even more than its usual solitary self.

There were things from the past that came back to me this year, things I cannot and will not discuss in a forum such as this, but suffice it to say, these things put a crack into that thin roof of hell upon which the famous quote says we all stride picking flowers, oblivious to the imminent danger just below. The idea that the monsters in the closet come back after childhood is over is enough to make anybody run, and running is exactly what I've been doing. Things I used to care about and enjoy have been pushed to the wayside. Friendships I treasure have been allowed to slide into decline. It's been easy to be too busy for everything because being busy keeps the mind from having time to engage topics better left alone.

I refuse to live 2007 this way. If I do, the monsters in the darkness win. So tonight, as I prepare for my own observances of the death of the old year and the birth of the new, I am lighting every candle in the house. The lights on my porch still glow and twinkle. There will be no darkness, no horrible things waiting in the shadows tonight. I will meet the new year with hope and with purpose. My family has its own traditions, and one of those is that odd-numbered years are lucky for us. I am looking forward to a lucky and healing 2007.

Happy New Year to you, wherever you may be.

Nothing Like Sickness for the Holidays

Christmas Eve morning, I woke up with that spaced-out feeling that precedes a bout of sinus crap for me. I hoped against hope that it was just allergies stirred up by something the previous day, but by the time I got home from church, I was really looped out. I went to sleep, and slept all day.

Christmas day, I was supposed to cook a breakfast meal for my family so we could do our gift exchange, but I couldn't even get up. We finally had Christmas last night around 8, and it was very low key.

I hate being sick, but this is the worst. I am fighting it with every medicine known to man, so hopefully, I can stave off an infection or bronchitis. I guess I should be glad that it's not school time right now, but man, I did NOT want to waste my precious holiday with this....

Citizen Kane

Today, I saw the movie ranked #1 by the AFI top 100 movies of all time poll. I don't know exactly why I haven't seen it before now, but it's one that has eluded me. I am currently trying out Netflix, and I decided to send for Citizen Kane after having seen most of Welles' Othello in my recent Shakespeare class.

I enjoyed it for several reasons. I was able, thanks to the Shakespeare class, to appreciate some of the technical things that were going on film-wise, and with me, the more I know about something, the deeper my enjoyment generally is. The storyline was also captivating, as was the way the story was presented. I can see why it's considered to be so great. If I knew more about its technical aspects, I could probably understand better why it's considered to be the best ever. I'm a little leery of labels like that.

While I don't think it will ever become one of my frequently-watched favorites, I am glad I saw it. I want to watch it one more time before I send it back to get the flavor of it better.

Passion for Vintage

Yesterday, another box of the vintage Shiny-Brite ornaments I won on eBay arrived. These were in the original box with Uncle Sam and Santa shaking hands. As I took each incredibly thin and fragile ornament from its box, I wondered what kind of Christmases each had seen. What presents had been unwrapped, what family meals had been consumed in their gentle twinkle? I felt privileged to be a part of their continuing history. I have one more box of them on the way, and that will probably end my collecting of Shiny Brite.

I have also been using my old cotton print tablecloths this season. My favorite one is a 1960's Santa and reindeer in reds, greens, and browns. It makes me incredibly happy just to smooth my hand across it on my table. Again, I can almost feel the "happy holiday vibe" coming from it. Granted, it could have been put away in someone's linen closet and never unfolded, but I prefer to think that maybe for at least one holiday, it soaked up some joy.

Currently, I am on the trail of a chenille peacock bedspread. I know just the colors I want, but I am having a hard time finding one in good condition and at an affordable price. A gorgeous one is up for auction on eBay, but the seller wants $250, and there's no way I can justify that. Hopefully, before summer, I will be able to find one that is both the color combination and price I desire. I think it will look great with the decor I already have in the house.

I guess I'm just a hard-core vintage junkie. Other prize holiday possessions are my previously mentioned Phil Spector collection and the absolutely lovely, sparkly Christmas tree pin I won at auction. I am going to wear it proudly to church tomorrow. Each of these items has opened up conversations with others: friends, parents, other collectors. This is one of my favorite parts of these things. My dad remembers having Shiny Brites on his family's Christmas trees when he was a child, and he knows, as did I, that my grandmother would have loved the Christmas tree pin. It's a connection to my own personal past as well as to the past of those who loved the items before me.

Another satisfying aspect of these things is finding their place in history. Nothing I have is of exceptional value; in fact, many of the things I enjoy collecting are fairly inexpensive. None of them are in the running with Waterford or Haviland for price, value, or historical significance. However, I've been learning a lot about these American products, and through them, I'm opening tiny windows into recent American history. Shiny Brite was made on a machine that was developed by Corning for light bulbs, and the peacock spreads were made in Georgia and originally sold off clotheslines to tourists. The tablecloths I love so much were a household staple brightening the kitchen tables of America for thirty years or so before they fell out of favor. These are the items that were common during my grandparents' and parents' time.

Now I have the joy of using these things and adding my own memories to the collections they already hold. There's nothing pretentious about these common-place treasures, but each time I unfold one of my vintage cloths, add a PEZ to my collection, place a hanger through the metal loop atop a Shiny Brite, or pin on my glittery tree pin or one of my other vintage brooches, I am making a bridge between the past and the present. It's a comfortable place to be.

Peace on Earth

We had a really great trip today to see my uncle. I had given Mom part of her Christmas gift early, an Elvis Christmas CD, and we all hummed along and sang as we traveled. Normally, Mom and I get irritated with each other at some point, but today was very peaceful. Maybe we need Elvis all the time.

Now, I'm back home, and although I had hoped to go carolling tonight, the current mizzening rain is kind of nice, too. There's a snoozing pit bull on the couch, various and sundry napping cats draped across chair backs and velour blankets, and I have at least three books I can choose from to spend the evening with.

I also got a package today from one of my eBay purchases. Six of the old-fashioned indent glass ornaments I won came in, and they look great on my tree. The other auction gained me eight more, and maybe they'll come in tomorrow. I love the old-fashioned look of them.

I'm going to spend the evening with the animals, the glittering tree, and whichever of the paperbacks I finally settle on. How could life possibly be better?

Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift for You

Today, the DHL man zipped up the driveway in his large, appropriately-yellow van, managed to overcome his fear of Roux, and delivered Phil Spector's Christmas compilation to my door. It's a fabulous bit of Christmas fluff. I have been listening to it as I've been driving around in this unseasonably hot 75 degree weather to finish out my Christmas shopping, and I am in a better mood than I've been in for a long time. I think it's probably impossible to listen to the Crystals sing "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" and be grumpy. I went bopping down the interstate and didn't once feel like yelling at anyone. I even managed to be cheery in the midst of the chaotic hell that is Wal-Mart these last few days before the holiday because no matter how many people cut me off with carts or screaming children, I was humming "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" a la the Ronettes. It was great. It's amazing how happy thirteen bucks can make a person sometimes...

Long Time, No Blog

I simply haven't felt like blogging in the past month. I've been too tired or too busy. I've often thought about it, but I simply haven't been able to scrape up enough interest to get into it.

I've spent the last few days since school got out singing in our choir musical, entertaining people from church, and generally trying to rest up some. Today, I spent most of the morning reading and glancing through eBay. It's delightful.

Soon, I really need to get the last of my Christmas shopping done. The same old dilemmas persist: what am I going to get Mom and Dad, people who want nothing, need nothing, and will request nothing? This year, I think I found a couple of neat things, but really, I still don't know exactly what to get them, and I don't want it to be gift certificates. I might go roam around Jackson a day and see if I can't find something there.

Well, I'll try to keep up the blog better now. Maybe I'll be able to come up with something better than the inane commentary here.

Holiday Procrastination

I am hopelessly behind with my work for my two night classes, so of course, today I got my Christmas tree, hung the lights and the ornaments, fixed the lights on my porch, and did laundry and other housework. The more behind I get with school, the spiffier my house and my holiday decorations get. I'm sure it's a kind of sickness.

It's nice, though, to see the tree up and all the lights glittering. I love Christmas, as I've said here before, and now when I'm coming home at dark-thirty from the endless pageant of night class crud, I will be able to see my lights welcoming me home. That along with a heavy dose of Christmas carols in the car and during my off period are keeping me in a mostly Christmasy mood.

Yesterday, I went to the Chimneyville Crafts Festival in Jackson. It's so nice to go somewhere and see items lovingly made by hand rather than mass-produced and cheaply-made things. Part of the experience is getting to talk to the craftspeople, too. I had a thirty minute conversation with a potter whose husband has an anagama (Japanese style wood fired kiln) in Tennessee. It was a touch of Japan, and I was thrilled. The piece I bought from them, a splendid raven figure, is something I had been thinking of since last year's show. They only make two each year, and last year both had been sold when I got there. This year, I was able to buy one. It's sitting in regal black satin splendor on my living room shelves.

Tonight, I played for church and also wound up getting drafted to sing. I was a nervous wreck, as usual, but I managed to get it out okay. The song, "What Child Is This?", is one of my favorites, so that helped. Now, I suppose I need to do a little class work before the almighty teacher bedtime kicks in. Sigh. Where are those magic ruby slippers or genie lamps when you really need them?