Friday, 21 November 2008
They say writers suffer from this compulsion to write; if so, I am a writer, but most of what you see here is the sludge in the bottom of my coffee cup. I must write, I write, but is what I write worth reading? Mostly not. I hate producing drivel, like I hate producing a weak cup of coffee two mornings in a row.
Yesterday, at the end of a really long, stressful day, when all I wanted was to go home to my peaceful, clean, quiet, dark empty house, a friend in need materialized at my office doorstep, and I spent another couple of hours listening. I also got a message from my sister on the cell which was the first salvo of the official "open season" on family.
Methinks I've been playing "nice" a bit too long, which is perceived of as a weakness in these parts, like a deer that moves slowly in the cold morning sun, setting herself right in the cross-hairs, so to speak. It must be time to talk turkey. Problem is this mixed compulsion, half of me wanting to run like said deer, and the other part wanting to stand up for people I care about, fight for truth, justice, and the non-American way.
I should be strong and fight the good fight, but I am tired and want to dream of sugarplums. I doubt I'm a worthy opponent, not a very sporting proposition. I need more sleep, more time to recharge, more ammo to reload. I want to make love, not war.
Hmmm. Maybe I could just love everyone to death and let them sort out their own agendas?
Oh, good, the weak coffee must be kicking in. Heh.
Thursday, 20 November 2008
Seriously, this is a banner event. I cleaned the kitchen, the bathrooms, did the laundry, changed the sheets, vacuumed, and, in general, created order out of chaos. And it took most of the friggin' day, so I had to do the grading stuff last night, but it Felt. So. Good.
I'd nearly forgotten what it feels like, a clean house. My universe suddenly makes sense. I am empowered. I am nesting. I am woman, hear me roar. I cooked dinner and invited a friend. Unfortunately, I work with this friend, so we talked shop. I'd rather have talked poetry, but she is stressed to the max by working too many hours just to earn a living, so we talked shop, and the economy. Ugh.
But after she left, I spent the evening grading and planning the little details of the last days of class, completing the illusion that I am in control of my destiny.
And you all know that's my favorite illusion. So this morning, when he called, I asked if, pretty please, because the house is clean, and we will have the weekend free, and we will otherwise not be able to do it until Christmas Eve, and Thanksgiving is at my sister's house this year (YESSS!), can we, pretty, pretty please, decorate the house early? We don't have to put up the tree or the lights, just all the little pretty things I like to scatter and drape through the house. And we can play our Christmas CDs, and even watch one of our Christmas DVDs that evening, sipping hot cocoa and snuggling, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty please?
and he said yes! only because he loves me.
I'm happy, happy, happy, happy today. Can you feel my grin from here?
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Teaching writing is a somewhat schizophrenic job. There are weeks of intense pressure to get everything done, when your home looks like a landfill. The dishes get crusty on the counter, the laundry piles high, and you can't find anything, especially the essentials, like your keys. The last two weeks went like that, and I nearly fell asleep on the drive to and from Atlanta, but getting away recharged my batteries (and my marriage) and fueled me for the remaining 15 days on my countdown clock.
So today is catch-up day, and I really need to catch up before the steamrollers of final grading and the holiday weekend roll over me. The latter may be more stressful and exhausting than the former, but they are a combo job, so I'm rolling up my sleeves here, got to multi-task and get it all done because Friday is filled with extra jobs that I now regret agreeing to do. How can a school ask its alumni to return as guests on a panel on a Friday this late in the term and mention in an email the week of that formal business dress is required and parking is grab-what-space-you-can, oh, and get here early???!!!??? This requires a run to the cleaners today, and it also requires that I wear running shoes with a jacket and skirt and pack heels and race across town from one meeting to the other. Never again, quoth the IML.
I've had a lot of surprise guests in my office lately, too, some of them delightful, and some quite the opposite. I find I have little patience with excuses, especially from faculty. And then there are the students with serious problems who want to use me as counselor, but I am doing my best to serve as referral service, sticking to what I was trained for: teaching writing. But I do offer sympathy and a listening ear, and that seems to be what most people need.
I get tired, really worn slap-out. So you can imagine what a delightful surprise it was yesterday to get a visit from the former student-cum-Marine, who told me he will remain behind at school to finish his degree while his unit ships out. We made plans, discussed ways we can support his unit from here. I'm really excited about this.
So this crazy old lady is going to be alright. Yesterday I quoted Lynne Truss in the classroom, the part that says that people who ignore the it's/its apostrophe controversy should be struck by lightning, dismembered, and buried in a nameless grave. Got to keep that sense of humor! Amazingly enough, a lot of my current students are signing up for my course next term. They must be masochists.
Monday, 17 November 2008
They were soft and soggy when I collected them on Saturday, the reds deeper, the yellows more golden. Now, dried and flat from being pressed in the book of poetry, they are clearly dead, a sharp contrast to the vivid life they represented just two days ago, when we kissed in a cold November windstorm of oak and maple garments, cast-offs that flew higher and farther than the kites we watched, dipping and diving in a dance macabre on a day so wild and windy even the clouds blew away.
The rose petals, by comparison, are still soft and curled and fragrant, as they were when he rubbed them on my skin in the warm, quiet, still room, a room which must seem very empty to him tonight, as our cold, dark house does to me. November is a time to linger over moments, to savor that which seems so fleeting, the flickering light which we know must inevitably pass on into something else, an unknown that we push into dark corners and ignore as long as we can.
moments
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Thursday, 13 November 2008
I'm sure it looked strange. I was standing outside my office, leaning on the doorframe, staring down the hall. She walked up, hesitated, and said, "How are you?" I replied, "I'm trying to figure out just what I'm doing here." She laughed, patted me on the arm, and said, "Aren't we all?"
It might have been the full moon, but I seem to have been living in a dual universe, like Gala in Dali's Lincoln. I'm not exaggerating either. I can't tell you the half of it here. You just have to trust me.
Freaking weird. And it just keeps getting weirder. I'll be back. Promise.
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
sometimes when you're really busy with a gazillion things on your mind some little thing makes you stop like a kid pushing a stick into the spokes of your bike wheel and when you land on the damp grass and do a quick inventory and find nothing wrong you look around and realize it's a sunny day with white puffy clouds and butterflies and small brown darting lizards that puff out their necks and an ant just climbed to the peak of a blade of grass and you feel the cold damp seeping into the seat of your jeans and the sun warming your face and the breeze caressing your skin and you just stay there on the hard ground and sit and breathe and feel
moments
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Saturday, 08 November 2008
NOTE: This is a replacement post for the post Roma and Athena responded to yesterday.
I woke up at 3 a.m., sat straight up in bed, and said, "Oh, no, you did it again. You fell into that self-pitying, angry, childish resentment mode. Erase that post now!" But the bed was soft and warm, so I snuggled up to him and fell back to sleep after about an hour of light worrying.
And we sat in the warm, sunny reading room with our coffee hours later and discussed it all, and, as always, we found a way to deal. He balances me out; I don't know what I'd do without him.
I don't know what I'd do without my family either. They challenge me, make me question myself continually, drive me mad frequently, but when the chips are down, when life and death are on the line, they are the people I turn to. They are truly great in a crisis!
Family is like a bag of mixed nuts in the shell. They're always around for the holidays, hard to crack, sometimes bad for our health, but always interesting and often delicious!
Friday, 07 November 2008
1. Helps avoid a lengthy jail term for third-degree murder.
2. Saves money on therapy.
3. There aren't enough good comic strips.
4. There will always be stacks of work in the inbox.
5. Most people don't enjoy conversations at 4 in the morning.
6. Saves trees.
7. Goes well with a mug of coffee. Or a glass of wine.
8. Prevents torching of malfunctioning electronic equipment.
9. Creates smiles that make people wonder what you're up to.
10. Virtual friends are more affectionate than virtual pets.
moments
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just for fun
Wednesday, 05 November 2008
Because I do not see the election as a sporting event where you root for your team and boo the opponents, and because I'd done my "part" by voting, I went to bed early last night with the leftover Halloween candy and watched (actually, dozed through) Steel Magnolias. I was not even remotely tempted to check the election results before going to sleep. So of course I've been awake since 4, when I had to get up to look at the election results. Stupid time change...can't we add an amendment to the ballot which gets rid of that obsolete idea?
On the electoral map, Florida is a blue state completely surrounded by red ones, further proof that Florida is not part of the "real" south. Except for the fact that Amendment 2 was so soundly defeated, I'd almost believe that this state is ready for change. You see, the good people in Florida overwhelmingly voted to amend our state constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The state had already legislated that morality. Next thing you know, the state officials will start to strip search the bride and groom at each wedding to prove the heterosexuality of the union.
I'd like to add here that Florida has the sixth highest teen pregnancy rate. But, by God, those girls were inseminated by boys, the good old "American Way."
We still have a long way to go, baby.
But blue is my favorite color.
moments
InMyLife |
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Sunday, 02 November 2008
My son showed up at my door around 8:20 Friday morning wearing a cape, with fake blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, to use my phone to call in late to work. He'd been at the school to check Lost and Found for his daughter's new jacket, which was not there, but found her jacket which had been lost the previous year. This reminded me of the aviator's jacket we'd given him when he was small, which was lost after the first wearing. The reason he had to use my phone is that he's lost his again; I think this makes an even dozen phones he's lost.
Apparently our family just is a distracted, abstract bunch of thinkers, always late, often lost, sometimes confused and occasionally brilliant. We tend to spontaneously annoy and charm people. Lost souls, perhaps, wandering the wilderness that is life.
As we stood in a very long line to vote yesterday morning, I realized that I had lost my sense of humor and sense of perspective on politics. We were both wearing our political colors, and I was ready to do battle with anyone who wanted to harass me for my politics, seeing as how I was standing on neutral turf for once, a level playing field. Partisanship was everywhere. The Democrats handed out literature to people who were the correct distance from the door while waiting in line. The Republican supervisor of elections, who is also running for re-election and uses our county voting website for free advertising, had his minions handing out "free" water at the door and mentioning his name.
We stood in line for nearly two and a half hours, so there was plenty of time to observe, think, and chat with others. I began to realize that most people had felt besieged this election, no matter their political affiliation. I saw the pride in every voter's face, but I saw a sense of something more, a feeling of being part of something big, a sense of enfranchisement that I had not noticed in any other presidential election, and I've voted in every one since I was 18. We talked about our jobs, our children, our interests.
One woman is a single mother who substitutes in public schools while waiting for a permanent position to open up. Another young woman is from the Dominican Republic, has been here 8 years, and still turns off lights as she leaves a room and tries not to waste any food, knowing there are still hungry people in the world. People missed work to stand in this line, they went miles out of their way because of a train that was stalled on a track for over an hour. They had to call people to pick up their children or to explain why they were late. They postponed their lives for hours, just in order to participate in a democracy, to be able to stand proud and know that they did their best to perform their duty as citizens, to make their voices heard in a world that increasingly does not seem to listen or to care.
I found, anew, that which was lost. It was waiting for me in line at the Elections Office.
