Wednesday, May 30, 2012

in real life

1.  i will spend 120 hours of summer in room 502... teaching.  yesterday, when i made the quick decision, i was bummed.  i grieved the loss of every minute of those hours.  said goodbye to all of the intense photographing and reading and writing and working out and changing the world i had planned to do with that time.

but today i feel better.  if i'm honest, i would have spent most of those mornings sleeping in for no real reason and spending money i don't have.  so, alas.  what's 20 more days of teaching?  it hardly qualifies as anything in the grand scheme of the universe.

maybe i'll even enjoy it.

2.  eating boatloads of garlic Tzatziki dip right before an afternoon of student project interviews is not the best idea i've ever had.

3.  who exactly is Nicholas Sparks?  like, really?  like, as a real person?

Friday, May 25, 2012

gnaw


during my first Field Day five years ago, I was ravenous.  I purchased a tamale and dashed off to my classroom to devour it.  I gnawed my way through the corn husk for about 10 minutes, thinking it was some kind of strange burrito.

kind of like the time i tried to gnaw through the edamame shells at a sushi restaurant for about ten minutes before i noticed everyone else throwing them into a dish on the table.

welcome to the west coast, midwest white girl.  your stomach is probably still digesting those fails.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

awesomness

J cleaned out the fridge.

me:  you.  you are awesome.

J: i know.  it's crazy, isn't it?

me:  i mean, how do i even handle your awesomeness?  it is mind blowing.

J:  that's why i have to work out.  so that my amazing, bulging muscles can contain my awesomeness.  it would erupt, ripping a normal man apart from the inside out.

Monday, May 21, 2012

containing fury & a laugh track

it is hard, sometimes,
to know who to listen to.
voices echo down the corridor
coming back from dreams
or coming back to the moment
from somewhere within.
sometimes it is a very long hall
full of
familiar voices
strange voices
wise voices
hollow voices
it is hard, sometimes,
to know which to listen to.

a weekend of ghosts:
revived by some
haunted by others

i am happy
it is not a natural happy yet
it is a happy i have to choose multiple times a day
it is a happy against the threat of so many things that would prevent its possibility
it is a happy that resists me, sometimes
a happy i have to fight and negotiate for

and some would say that it is not happiness, then--
that happiness is supposed to be easier than that.

i/do you disagree./?

the strangest dreams have me waking up on edge-
and so this morning began:

morning commute, chugging down a diet mountain dew before a drop of water even enters my body.  nodding my head to npr as though i have the slightest idea about the arab spring or the rest of the world.  annoyed at myself and everyone on the highway.  knowing full well this is about the time when i should turn those thoughts inside out if i want a chance at any amount of optimism today.

but i don't.  and it doesn't stop-- but it doesn't get worse.
it's like the grown up version of an angela chase internal monologue.
angela chase at 29.
my whole day is an internal monologue containing fury and a laugh track.

look at the people.  look at all the weird people.  harriet the spy, judging the whole world.  happy people.  loud people.  dressed up people.  dressed down people.  moms who don't know how to park.  the umbrella.  the choices.  ankles.  volume.  posture.  world views.  the slackers.  the overachievers.  the fury.  the laughter.
i am convinced that the things i judge other people for end up becoming my own plight.
i have fat, german ankles.

attention whores everywhere
everyone performing for someone
for some reason

everyone is trying so hard &
no one is ever good enough
& everyone is hell bent on trying to be.

i am not sure what there is to learn here.

"my mind is a corridor.  the minds about me are corridors.
nothing suggests itself.  there is nothing to do but keep on."



Sunday, May 20, 2012

Henry Simon Patrick Good Part I

Henry Simon Patrick Good was an alone sort of boy.  He was the kind of boy that you might find cleaning off his goggles with a tissue or staring at the fish tank while the other kids munched on cookies or squirmed and writhed their hands in their air to be called on.  He was the kind of boy who kept a collection of chewed bubble gum on a tinfoil pie plate in his closet.  He was the kind of boy that others seemed to slowly edge away from, not out of fear or a very clear disgust, but out of a general sense of "he is not like me."  And Henry Simon Patrick Good always- ALWAYS- wore goggles.

Simon and Patricia Good were the good kind of parents.  Patricia was the good kind of mother who read stories out loud to Henry, even when he was still in the womb, and Simon began to build a two story tree house in the old Oak tree as soon as he learned he would be a good father.  They were the good kind of parents who, even when Henry didn't speak a single word, much less a sentence, until the first day of kindergarten, loved him and adored him and said good kinds of things like, "Perhaps he is more of a musician or an artist or an athlete than a talker.  We will wait and see."

Friday, May 18, 2012

peeve

Out of a long list of famous poets to choose a poem from, so many of the girls want to recite Frost.  I want to shout at them:

STOP! You have no business with Frost!  What do you know about nature or looming mortality or old age or youth?  Stick with the shocking or haunting poets.  Stick with the lovers.  You are not old enough to know about life.


Which is probably not the best attitude for a teacher to have.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

all

Remember when S presented her last poetry recitation as my student and brought a handful of her classmates to tears?  "After Auschwitz" by Anne Sexton.  you know you're completely legit when you can recite a poem containing the line:
                   "And death looks on with a casual eye and scratches his anus"
and not a single adolescent person in that room snickers or even breaks eye contact.
That's how you know.

Remember when i was a student- rapt attention- could not avert my eyes.... i did not dare break eye contact, afraid i would miss something.  i wanted to consume everything- to see every syllable.  there was that moment- that beautiful, perfect, outside of time moment-
"i gave you all"
where Jose acted King Lear so convincingly that I almost cried.

"i gave you all."

and even after reading hundreds of pages on the play, and producing about 20 of my own,
that was the closest i ever felt to lear.

remember when i got to play emily in Our Town?  remember when i got to move people?

i admire people who embrace the reckless abandon of performance.
in abandoning self consciousness, we touch something so pure.

i want to be moved.  i want to move.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

one way to say it


upon finishing The Crucible:

student 1: john proctor is a true homie.
me:  what makes him a true homie?
student 2:  he took a bullet for the whole town.

Friday, May 11, 2012

becoming & a looming mortality


Perhaps not to be is to be without your being

Perhaps not to be is to be without your being,
without your going, that cuts noon light
like a blue flower, without your passing
later through fog and stones,
without the torch you lift in your hand
that others may not see as golden,
that perhaps no one believed blossomed
the glowing origin of the rose,
without, in the end, your being, your coming
suddenly, inspiringly, to know my life,
blaze of the rose-tree, wheat of the breeze:
and it follows that I am, because you are:
it follows from ‘you are’, that I am, and we:
and, because of love, you will, I will,
We will, come to be.
-Pablo Neruda

loud explosion child & and an eternity of puke

A:  i'm at work right now and i don't want to do a damn thing.  nothing at all.
me:  me neither.  two more hours sounds so wretched.
A:  ughhh doesn't it?  it's like an eternity of puke.

also:

RBC: Everything in life is an experiment.
me:  are those words from your boss' mentally demented brother?
RBC:  yep.  he is so odd.  he wants to set me up with a doctor he knows in san diego.
me:  what kind?
RBC:  a peruvian kind.  i don't know.  some type of physician.
me: sounds like he probably smells good and knows witchcraft.
RBC: what?
me:  That's what a peruvian physician makes me think of.

also:

i've been having really good days and then -BOOM- FEELINGS make themselves known.  wretched, illogical FEELINGS.  like a gross burp from the past.  indigestion.  heartburn.

process.
process.

and also too:

regarding the way that some people say "boom son" to excess:
me:  what if i just started liking every one of *'s posts?  what if?
dm: then i guess you'd be his son?
me:  which just adds to it all.  who is that even addressed to?  his homies?  life is so weird.
dm:  i think you should start saying "boom girl" on your sentences.
me:  boom, daughter.
dm:  how about "loud explosion child"
me:  yesssssssssss!

and most importantly:

"Sometimes 'intuition' is just a deceptive reflection of where you once were; counter intuition can be liberating."
needed that.  also- scary.  how do you ever know?
"commit to a different and purposeful strategy, and be objective in assessing what is happening.  honest friends help."

Saturday, May 5, 2012

a general terror

A few occurrences leading to general terror:

Occurences:
1.  May Crowning ceremony.   (for me, already a strange mix of emotions concerning the whole ordeal)  there is this speaker there who i'd heard of for years- she was making a name for herself as a christian musician even back when i was in the extremes of my religious devotion.  now she is standing before all of us in all her in-your-face-chaste glory- just beside herself with giddiness and zeal over her love affair with the lordjesuschrist.  just beaming.  true passion.  quirky- a christian zooey deschanel.  i can't decide if i love her for her quirkiness or despise her for everything else that she is.

because everything else is so much of nothing.

she tells a mother theresa miracle story where she thought that god hadn't answered her prayer but it turns out he just had other ways of answering that were far better than any of her plans because he always knows best (always always).  she is just... in love.  she is absolutely entranced by her spiritual rompings in the invisible world- with the little mysteries that jesus has lovingly planted around every corner for her to find...  with how well jesus knows us and loves us so truly- better than anything on this earth.

and i am angry.
i am angry because, given a few different decisions or changes of events, that could have been me.
my sister and i used to hold little may crowning ceremonies in elementary school where we'd drag mary across the back yard in a shoe box full of dandelions and sing church songs.
i have been that giddy over invisible love affairs before.
i have looked at people straight in the eye and talked about miraculous things that have happened to me.  about how jesus had answered my prayers.
about the realities of heaven and hell.
that giddy, all glory to god, DEEPLY DELUSIONAL woman on stage could have been me
and it makes me damn angry.

because she is genuinely happy
and because no one is standing up and shouting "WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?  WHAT IS THIS NONSENSE?  THIS IS NONSENSE."  No one.  Including me.
and because the fact that living your whole life based on nonsense does not mean that you will be unhappy-

and i wish that it did.

i am alone in the cheering section for logic and reason.  the rest of the bleachers are full of people who clamor and applaud the feeling of it all.  look at her joy!  look at how happy she is- isn't that wonderful?

sure.  happiness is wonderful.
but at what cost?  at what cost?
more than i can afford- but a cost that the majority of the humanoids on the planet cough up gladly and seemingly with little effort. believe that a living human being DIED but then came back to life and LITERALLY FLEW up into the air and waits... somewhere... for this whole earth stuff to play out for awhile until he returns?  SURE!  SURE!  i can buy that!  because that means i know what happens when i die!  sign me up!

2.  there was a day last week when my emotions reigned supreme.  i could not think a logical thought to save my life. everything pushed me to tears.  everything mattered so deeply.  you can probably guess the cause.  i tried desperately all day to talk sense into myself- to try to discern carefully whether my overwhelming feelings were the result of legitimate concerns that should be addressed, or if they were the result of insane hormonal spikes going on in my body, completely out of my control.  i spent the whole day in court in my mind- trying to weigh and test every overwhelming feeling.  the jury only came back with a verdict a few days later when my hormone levels stabilized.  hormones were the culprit, and i'll probably find myself in court again next month.

all of that seems absurd to me.  the idea that for a few days each month, due solely to the fact that i am a woman and exist in a body- that for a few days each month i cannot trust my mind or feelings to have anything to do with objective reality.  that i can recognize what is happening in my body and how it's affecting me, but can't do a damn thing to change it.  downright absurd.  when are any of us in our right minds?  really in control?

3.  Sitting in a free lecture on Communication and Mindfulness.  all kinds of people there.  the crazies you'd expect.  the seemingly normals you overlook.  and me.  i am there.  half way through, i look around at this mix of humans and i decide that i like them.  i like them all.  at least for the next hour.  right now, i like their eyes- they have READY eyes.

none of us had to be there.  we were there.

sometime in the middle of it,  the speaker says something about how when a person has a particularly traumatic experience, that often times the brain will work to actively suppress or change that memory so as not to re-traumatize the person by having them "go through" it again in their mind.  so the brain, without our conscious effort, will override experience and operate as though something had never happened, or alter memory to allow us to cope with the experience.

makes sense, i guess.  i suppose we all do that to a greater or lesser degree.  some things take a long time and courage to address head on.  sometimes there is not purpose or benefit from going back and reliving or dwelling on particularly terrible experiences.  it makes sense, i guess.  and...

 i find it to be TERRIFYING,
and the beginning of a general terror i am still navigating:

WHO EXACTLY IS IN CHARGE HERE?  You mean to tell me that at the end of the day, we can't even say that what we remember or experience is TRUE or REAL?  We can't even trust ourselves?  That our brain can override our consciousness... act on its own?  what is my brain?  who am i, then?  how do i ever even know if my "logic and reason" are based on anything true at all?  is all i can say at the end of the day is "i did my best with what i could understand to be true" ?   THAT DOES NOT SEEM STURDY ENOUGH- STURDY AT ALL- AND THERE IS NO ONE TO SUBMIT MY COMPLAINT TO.

if that is all we're working with, then no the fuck wonder why people dive so eyes-closed-head-first into religious devotion.  if all this amounts to is "a best we can do," knowing full well that often times we can't even trust our own judgement to be aligned to any sort of outside truth- they why the heck not believe in a santa claus god who sprinkles your life with little blessings and mysteries that bring you a very "real" sense of joy and purpose for living.  why the hell not?

but i'm not wired that way (i used to be).  i cannot believe (i used to).  i do not believe (i did).  and i am angry about it.  angry that delusional belief has so many benefits, and the consequences of delusional belief are not explored more carefully.  angry that, so often, feelings and emotion trump reality (whatever that is, i guess) and logic- even in our own brains and memories.

listless

1. i cannot remember a day without a cookie. it's been such a long time.
2. i have not smoked in eleven days. and counting.
3. i cannot focus on anything.
4. i have never heard that "call me, maybe" song in full, yet parts of it have been looping in my mind for days now. i don't even know who sings it. unacceptable. i plan to never ever hear the whole song, much like my avoidance of the whole twilight phenomenon.
5. i should not be allowed to watch the news or read the newspaper until i am at a severely apathetic age where humanity does not phase me anymore.
6. on my mind: camera, looming paper project, retreat, summer, john proctor, healthy living
7. i read this part of Best Non Required Reading (2006?) where they asked some scientists to comment on something that they believe in but cannot prove. Some of the most intriguing responses, to me, involved: true love & that time does not exist
8. what the hell, humans? what are we? what are we doing here? please respond.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

a million ways a day

Scatter brained
I feel all sides of it
A million ways a day
Remember
Reminder
Focus
Distraction
On distraction
Focus
Scatter
I am not my brain
It is a fallible thing
A trained pony trained to say neigh
Or to obey Lifts its hooves to a repeated beat
Who is the drummer, boy?
Who's calling your shots?
What makes you prance?
Who exactly is in control here?
Who's outside it to call it a pattern?
Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiio u
Blinders to the periphery
Terrors over there
Little glimpses all the time
Comfort in some steady rhythm
Hollow drum

Focus
Focus