Looking for the Past

I just spent about thirty minutes looking for various and sundry people I knew from the past on Facebook. I have had a page for a long time now, but I seldom do anything with it. I wouldn't have gone there tonight had somebody from high school not sent me a message.

I think I found somebody I've been curious about since I graduated high school, but I can't be sure yet. If so, it will be the single-most useful moment of my entire association with either Facebook or MySpace. I am so hoping that the person I wrote to is the person I think I wrote to.

There's not much else to say. I'm still grading research papers. I don't think it is ever going to end. I only have one class left, though, so perhaps the faintest of glimmers is visible at the end of the tunnel.

Well, it's late, and I'm worn out from yarding today. Maybe the person will be who I thought they were so I'll have something interesting to write about later this week.

Busyness

This weekend, I caught up on some housework chores that I've been meaning to take care of for awhile. I redid my guest room so it now can function as a guest room rather than a depot for linens not in use. I took the bedroom set I had in my room before I got my peacock bedspread and moved a lot of my stuff from Japan in there as well. It's amazing how much difference it made. Of course, I now have to find things to go on my bedroom walls, but that too will be enjoyable.

Today, I did intensive cleaning. I think I folded every piece of clothing I own and put it away. It's amazing how easy it is to do laundry and how hard it is to find the time to fold it and properly put it away during the school year. I vacuumed up about three cats-worth of critter fur from all the carpets in the house, most of it from my long-haired grayish-white cat, Pearl. I still have a couple of things I need to do, but I am largely caught up. Since this week promises to be complicated, I think this is a good thing.

I also got a lot of sleep this weekend. That more than any other thing is going to help me. I feel as if I'm starting to fight a sinus thing, and maybe I slept enough to give my body a fighting chance. Almost every teacher I know has been struck down with the end-of-the-year crap, and I really can't afford to join those ranks.

I'm ending my weekend by mixing up my weekly batch of sourdough and watching the beautiful Mr. D'Onofrio. Tomorrow, I'll have to go back to the world outside my door, but at least when I get to come back home for five minutes, it will be a clean haven.

Making Peace with Hemingway

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
- Ernest Hemingway

I'm nearing the end of what has turned out to be a surprisingly enjoyable course covering almost everything Hemingway wrote. I didn't expect to find any of the works that I could have more than a passing technical appreciation for, and I wasn't overly optimistic that I would feel any real affection for the author himself, either.

For the first few meetings, those prophecies were fulfilled. The female characters were laughable or downright unrealistic. Scenes of brutality were displayed that I could not abide. Everybody died. I got mad frequently.

Somewhere along the way, though, an overwhelming wave of pity filled me. I think it was about the time we read Green Hills of Africa and during the presentation, we did some online research and discovered that Hemingway sent for the gun his father had used to kill himself. There was never a happy ending possible for Hemingway, either in his fiction or in his real life.

To my surprise, I found a lot to enjoy. My book to present was For Whom the Bell Tolls, and in it and in The Sun Also Rises, I found a Hemingway I could appreciate. Even in Death in the Afternoon, I found treasure. Despite the fact that I can never condone bullfighting, I was moved by his obvious passion for it and all other things Spanish. The writing in the Nick Adams short story cycle was wonderful.

I have finally decided to just overlook the women. Clearly, based upon what happened to him in his real life, he had no idea about what a real woman was, wanted, or how one would behave. I don't blame him for the cardboard cut-outs; instead, I find it a source of profound pity for him.

As we had the last of the novel presentations last Wednesday for A Moveable Feast, the pseudo-legitimate memoir posthumously published by his last wife, the presenter mentioned the continual presence of the term "emptiness" throughout the book. It struck me as I sat there that this was the key, the final illumination needed to understand this complex man and his writing. He was consumed by the emptiness withing. He sought ever-increasingly more complex experiences, ever more alcohol, ever more dangerous sports, ever greater challenges, ever more admiring women in an effort to fill that void, and ultimately, when the emptiness could no longer be filled, it swallowed him whole. The progression, the foreshadowing, is very clear when you read all his works back-to-back. The darkness always lingers in his defiant, deprecatory comments about suicide as a coward's way and also in the constant lack of a happy ending for any of his characters.

I keep wondering what would have happened to him if he had found the thing he needed to fill that void. Would his voice have been stilled? Would the despair have turned to transcendent hope? I like to think that if he had found the thing that fills those dark shadows of the soul that instead of a legacy of tragedy, he might have left a legacy of triumph instead.

Ultimately, I have made my peace with Hemingway. There are several pieces that I would read again and several that I will shelve indefinitely. I no longer see him as a misogynistic anachronism. Instead, I see a troubled man who loved writing almost more than any other thing, and I feel a great compassion and honor for the struggle.

A Nice Break

Today is the last day of my Easter break. It has been a nice four days. I needed a rest terribly. Of course, all my good intentions for getting school work done went down the tubes, but I feel much more rested.

Right now, I'm stuck in the class from perdition. I have, so far, done research for the paper I'll write for my other class, checked on my eBay auctions, read and responded to my school mail, and I'm about to write up the mini-report needed for my Wed. night class. It's amazing what can be done in 2.5 hours.

I think my class is the only class still here. Almost everybody else cancelled class tonight like sane, humane people. Only my professor raves (literally) on.

In other news, I'm reading a really good book right now. It's called Gentlemen and Players and it's by Joanne Harris, the author of Chocolat. I stayed up later than I had intended reading it last night, and I'm probably going to hide it behind my laptop screen and read some more in just a minute. (Shameful behavior!!)

Well, I need to finish up some work for Wednesday night. I might come back and do another post as we grind toward the finish line for this week's edition of Purgatory.

Where Is Wonder Woman?

When I was little, my favorite superhero was Wonder Woman. I religiously watched the Lynda Carter show, owned at least one doll, and of course, had the Underoos. (I don't even know if they still make Underoos, but if they don't, today's kids are really missing a joy.) Whenever we were picking imaginary people to be in kindergarten or on the playground, Wonder Woman always came up as one of the most hotly contested choices. All of us girls wanted to be her. She was pretty, she was classy, she could kick butt, and at least on the show, she was the only person with brains in the whole outfit.

When my Mom was on one of her "clean out the kid's old room" kicks, she unearthed an old Avon hand mirror with Wonder Woman on it and sent it to me. That in conjunction with my current lifestyle of non-stop activity made me start thinking about Wonder Woman again. I found and downloaded the old theme song for the show and made it into a ringtone for my cellphone. I took a picture of the old mirror and made it into a wallpaper for the same phone. I guess it's sort of portable inspiration.

I was in a daze one day and cruising through Wal-Mart, and decided that it would be funny to find a little action figure of her to put on my desk for moral support. (When my blood sugar dips and I'm in Wal-Mart, all kinds of things seem funny that may or may not really be...) I rolled down the toy aisle, and lo and behold, no Wonder Woman. No female figures of any kind. I remember thinking, "What the...."
Spiderman was everywhere, X-Men were cluttering up the aisle, Superman was present, but there was not one female figure among them. What happened to Wonder Woman?

I have heard rumors that a movie is going to made about her. I hope so. I hate to think of all the little girls growing up without knowing about her. She taught us children of the 70s and 80s a lot. She taught us that it was okay to be strong, that it was right to be honest, and that ultimately one has to do the right thing. That may be a lot to draw from an admittedly cheesy TV half-hour show involving a woman in a star spangled shorts, a bustier and pantyhose (definitely a man's idea for a crime fighting outfit), but I still miss her. The idea of what she was at the core was always more important to us that the TV representation. She was a strong woman filling her place in the world with passion and determination, even when that place was difficult or dangerous. I think the world couldn't help but be a better place if Wonder Woman came back.

Fatigue Poisoning

If you fell down yesterday, stand up today. -- H.G. Wells

I heard a new phrase today: "fatigue poisoning". I think I have it whether it's real or not. I am so tired, physically, mentally, and emotionally, that I feel like I could sleep for a million years.

School continues to grind me into dust. I found out that one of the very first people I knew at my school is leaving. I can't blame him. I'm happy for him. He deserves to go somewhere where he can be happy and not have so much placed upon him, but I can't help but feel that this makes our chances of doing something with our school less.

Such a small thing shouldn't make me feel so negative, but there are other factors that combine with this and make me need a break. Easter Break starts tomorrow afternoon, and I'm hoping that it will be enough of a holiday for me to limp to the end of the year. I am going to finish up a test I'm giving tomorrow, and then I'm going to sleep. Hopefully that will let me make it through tomorrow.

Purgatory

I'm sitting waiting for the worst class in the world to begin. I finally resorted to bringing in my laptop for a diversion so I don't smack the teacher and run out screaming. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is the post you've all been waiting for....live from Podunk U, it's Monday Niiiiiiight.....

I just got to fill out a professorial evaluation form, and while I usually try not to mark the "Strongly Disagree" boxes, this time, I was gleefully checking them off. I cannot ever remember a class that so frustrated me. Right now, I don't even care what grade I get; I just want out.

I think this class would be a good modern version of Purgatory: it goes on forever, there are no gains, and it's definitely painful enough to make one wish to repent of whatever wrong had been done to land one here. It's a real shame, too. The class had such potential to be interesting. That, however, was pretty much choked out of it within the first two class meetings.

Well, I think I'm about to have to pretend that I'm paying attention. In reality, I will be grading papers, planning lessons, updating class websites, and lots of other things that I know are rude. I'm past politesse, however. It's all about survival.

A Long Week

This week has seemed endless. The first week back after a holiday is always interminable, but this one seemed worse than usual. I think it's because all the research papers came in this week. It's been a frenzy of last-minute advice, editing, and preparation as all my students were trying to get their papers ready for today. I have been really pleased to see that the majority of my students worked hard on getting it done. I was half afraid when we started that many of them would just choose not to do one. I still have to go through and grade all of them, and there may be many problems with them, but at least they cared enough to do the work, ask me questions, and try. That counts for a lot these days.

I am so tired that I actually fell asleep in my lawn chair this afternoon. I had gone out with the new striped cushion Mom bought for me to read and enjoy some of this eighty-degree weather we're having, and next thing I knew, Roux was licking me in the face 30 minutes later. I came in and just took a nap. I'm headed back to bed soon. Maybe I can get some stuff done tomorrow if I can get some sleep tonight.

I heard back from the poetry contest today. I didn't even place this year. Oh well. I can't say I'm surprised or even very disappointed. I had a feeling that I wouldn't make it in three years in a row. I still believe in the value of that poem, though. It seems that the ones I like the best don't ever make it in competition. It's okay. I guess they're like children; your own are rarely ugly to you.

Well, it's not really late, but I am almost asleep as I type, so I'm going to call it a night before I go to sleep in my chair here. Maybe I can get to the computer to type sometime before next weekend, but no promises....

PET FOOD RECALL

If you have pets to whom you give "wet" canned or pouch food, PLEASE check this site. A major manufacturer whose products retail under several famous names and in many pet stores and retail stores has tainted product that is causing kidney failure and death in dogs and cats. Make sure your babies are safe.

http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01590.html

SO Sore....

The backs of my legs feel like overtightened guitar strings. Every time I move, I think one of them is going to twang and snap. I've been working in my yard for the past two days, and my poor teacher body is woefully unready for such labor.

I started by getting a bunch of old bricks from an old house place to make some flower beds. I planted my lilies, added a concrete St. Francis (no, not Catholic, but I find him admirable anyway), fertilized my patchy front yard, planted two roses, repotted ailing Christmas cacti, tuned up my mower, cut up live oak leaves and trimmed off all the old winter weeds, fought with the vine tangle in the corner of the yard, and generally overdid it.

I still need to plant some cannas, make a bed for a gardenia I bought, and pot up some petunias I got on impulse. I don't know if I'm going to get it all done this week, but I'm going to try. It's been very nice to sit on the porch swing or the lawn chair and read in the evenings. I am also quietly proud of my little brick-edged beds. It's amazing how the addition of a few small pieces of hardened clay make something look finished off.

Well, it's TV time, soon to be followed by go-to-sleep time if I can unbend myself from this chair. Tomorrow will be another day of yarding.

Luscious

There's no other word for the weather today than luscious. I woke fairly early and got the housework underway. Once I got it to the run-the-dryer stage, I took a book and went out to my lawn chair. It was fantastic. The sun and the shade, the absolute indulgence of reading for pleasure and not for classes was like a balm on frazzled nerves. Tomorrow, barring the unforeseen, will be a day of yard. I am going to rebuild my bottle trees with some four-by-whatever timbers. Even though I like the look of using tree branches, I'm tired of having to rebuild them constantly. This way, they should last indefinitely. I'll try to do some pictures when I get them up. Well, I've indulged in Sonic after church tonight, and I'm watching the Bravo Law and Order:CI Sunday night marathon, so life is good in Podunk. Thank God for Spring Break.

Long Time Away

It's been a long time since I've had the time or even felt like Blogging. There are a lot of things that fall into that same category. Being a teacher and a student at the same time is harder than I thought it would be. I'm enjoying doing both, but neither leaves very much time for creative endeavours.

Spring Break has finally arrived, and I'm celebrating by watching Ferris Bueler. I haven't seen this movie in years, and I had forgotten how funny it is. It should seem dated being from the great 80s, but somehow, it really doesn't except for a few hairstyles and the soundtrack.

Life in Podunk goes on. I am now on Every Committee Known to Man at school, and we're in the final rush to graduation, testing, and other finalities for 2006-2007. It's odd to think that soon I won't see this batch of students any more. I've known some of them for three years and taught some of them twice. Seeing them go will be emotional, but I'm so proud of most of them.

I am attempting to do some minor yarding this week. I went a little nuts in the Wal-Mart garden department and purchased five pots of lilies, some petunias (one of my favorites), and two roses, one of which is called Irish Creme. Today I bought a concrete St. Francis to put in a bed I'm building. My favorite thing, though, is a big white plastic lawn chair I put under my pecan trees in the side yard. I plan to spend some quality time in it this week with something that's not Hemingway.

I have also been to some of my favorite junkin' places. I found a couple of really gorgeous old hankies, an old yellow McCoy Floraline planter for my lucky bamboo, and a really cool 40's tablecloth with good luck charms all over it. All this was less than $30. How great is that? I plan to spend some time junkin' in a couple of new locations in the next few days.

It will be nice to have a week to decompress. I had reached a point of desperation by Friday. I think everybody at the school had, teacher, student, and admin alike.

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.