tangential meditation

My life is one long, lovely tangent. It seems I always end up perpendicular to my goal. For instance, today. I got onto Itunes to purchase Josh Ritter's "Kathleen". Ten minutes later, I bought Dar Williams' "The Beauty of the Rain" (and no Josh Ritter).

Or, earlier this evening, I left the cloth store to go to Office Depot to buy some plastic sleeves for my students' notebooks. I landed across the street from Office Depot at Target where I bought contact lens cleaner, hygiene products, including a toothbrush, several greeting cards, a plastic box, and heart shaped York peppermint patties. I didn't exactly execute Plan A.

I find I do this whenever I work or write. I set out on what seems to be an obvious, straightforward path and end up somewhere else. This afternoon I wanted to work on lesson plans. Instead, I did four loads of laundry, cleaned and organized my bedroom and bathroom. My essential goal of being productive was met, but I didn't hit my target at all.

I have a knack for getting lost. It's rarely a "in the dark of an eerie forest with an evil villain chasing you" kind of lost. It's a more of a "rambling in an Greek village where none of the citizens speak English and realize you have no idea how to get back to your hotel" kind of lost.

I wonder if my goal-setting mechanism is faulty or if I'm allergic to every To Do List I write. I love writing TDLs. In fact, my lengthy lists always become jokes with my roommates because I never look at them again. I'm a Random Abstract in a world of Concrete Sequential. It's odd because I'm so terribly pragmatic. In short, I'm a dessert recipe that calls for a tablespoon of tarragon. I just need to chillax as my twelve year-olds tell me.

Whenever I needle myself about this idiosyncracy, I inevitable return to the JRR Tolkien poem:

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

In a world of shiny people who write and execute 10 year plans, I feel like a wandering, lackluster dolt. But, perhaps, this is not so. Perhaps, my proclivity for getting lost is a gift. Maybe my tangent is leading to the exact point I need to be in the straightest way. The tangential nature of me and my life leaves me feeling like a stranger in a strange land. And, after all, I am. We're on a journey where not all gold glitters nor those who wander are necessarily lost. This is not what Madison Ave. would have us believe. So, I gain my bearings by burrowing into every glorious story I can get my grubby hands on.

false alarm

Ha! My computer is back to normal this morning. I drained the battery, wept, turned it off, gnashed teeth, then recharged it. Voila!

My laptop could smell the 7th grader on me, and it decided to give me some attitude. What a relief! I hope it's back to normal.

notice

My computer is on the fritz. It's going wonky. It's four years old. So, things may get patchy for a while. I'm hoping it's just being ornery, but my luck is rarely that good.

News: I had fun serving dinner at the homeless shelter last night. I dished out cake with a sixth grader. It was interesting, fun and humbling. I'm considering making it a weekly gig-- they need volunteers Wednesdays and Fridays. And, I went to a colleague's father's visitation. This activities provided some much needed perspective.

25 Things: an exercise in self-absorption

1. I dig poetry and classical music.
2. Where the Wild Things Are profoundly impacted my intellectual, spiritual and emotional life.
3. I took 5.5 years of ballet to no avail.
4. I lettered in running, swimming and rowing. They’re what I like to call cat sports.
5. I took piano lessons in 2-3rd grades and played the Horn in 7-10th grades.
6. Bach is my favorite composer. His music settles me.
7. My favorite toy as a kid was a nameless white mouse who squeaked when you squeezed it. (yes, it was a cat toy).
8. I also owned an aquamarine elephant stuffed animal that played "It's a Small World After All" when wound up. This is the root of my political leanings.
9. I had a crush on Holden Caulfield in 10th grade, and I crushed on Robert Sean Leonard and Thomas Jefferson in 11th grade. No guy has yet to live up to this trio.
10. I like to think I haven’t read my favorite book yet.
11. Vancouver is my favorite city. I’d even switch to British English and spell it “favourite” if it’d help me get the papers to move.
12. I love to run, read and write. Furthermore, I’ve discovered there’s no correlation between what you love to do and what you’re good at.
13. I excel at awkwardness.
14. I need novelty but thrive on routine. I’m going to rock my 70s and 80s.
15. When I consider God’s goodness, I see the most evidence in my friends and family. Quality.
16. If I were independently wealthy, I would be a perpetual student and travel in the summers.
17. I’m a whiner, but I like to think my wit makes up for it.
18. I ate seven homemade brownies today.
19. ACDC’s “Shook Me” makes every running mix I burn.
20. I’d rather run five miles than do 5 crunches and pushups.
21. I look like my maternal grandfather.
22. I rarely remember my sleeping dreams.
23. I’m fond of hyperbole and my own sense of humor.
24. At this point, I’m ambivalent about teaching, or maybe I’m ambivalent about teaching 7th graders.
25. I eat just about everything, esp. homemade brownies. I draw the line at organs.

crash. burn. rise from the ashes.

This little punk is getting to me. I should have gone to bed at seven to insure I got enough sleep to deal with him with my sense of humor in tact. I think, I'm going to sit him in the back of the room and just let him draw away. When he fails, he fails. That is that. I've emailed and called his mom multiple times, and I'm tired of his attitude and how he sours the entire atmosphere of my room. So, I'm going to let him draw and read instead of dealing with his smarmy attitude. If he engages, he engages. (I'm up at 11:30-- not a good thing for my little miscreants!!)

I'm about sick of the semester's grades. They took me over five hours to enter into the system; I've done it three times at least. I missed checking some boxes. Some of my changes didn't take. I'm so sick of the computer program that I don't care that two of the grades are wrong. I'm a bad, bad teacher.

But, I redeemed myself in finding some groovy writing lessons. I've been at a loss at how to transmit information about style and format. But, I found some cool video clips on United Streaming. Oh, I use technology. And, my Social Studies plans are little unmined gems.

I got paid today. The check keeps me in the game.

breather

I need a break from the book I'm reading... the protagonists just died. I need to compose myself to muscle through the gut-wrenching ending. Literature can be so gothic and gloomy. It's also beautiful and bizarrely cathartic to experience Fos and Opal die. But, what's going to happen to Lightfoot? I can't decide if Fos committed suicide. Was he really that weak? Did his scientific world view fail him?

And, I need a breather from school. I was completely exasperated by the end of my classes today. The students wouldn't shut up. It's as if they're goldfish. They had two long weekends in a row, which somehow sabotaged all the progress in classroom management I'd made. This stuff does not come naturally to me. I need to come up with a rewards system for the kids... a feasible one. Maybe I should reinstate the apple. And putting in your name for good behavior. And having drawings at the end of the week. We could start fresh every week.

My deed of noble note was giving a pint of blood, which took a total of 4 minutes and 53 seconds. My nurse was as competitive as I. I asked her how long it took to draw a pint. She told me anywhere from 5 to twenty minutes. Then, she looked over at the guy near me and leaned in towards me and said, "He's a wimp. He should at least pretend while his daughter's around." She set our goal: beat the wimp. I've never really had a competitive element to donating blood. But, it did make it more exciting to race (and took my mind off the gory details). After we beat "the wimp", my nurse high-fived me and said, "Girl power!"

Starkville

We all live in Starkville. It's the setting of all good stories-- perhaps my novel. Stark contrasts. Stark reality. Grim and absolute are the thesaurus categories that "stark" falls under. All good stories-- anything true-- has to deal with the stark contrast of humans (the generosity and greed, the good and evil, the sacrifice and violence, etc.). In Art, the term for the contrast between dark and light is "chiaroscuro" (Italian for light-dark). Art, Music, Theology, Story and Politics have to deal with this chiaroscuro in the human condition.

Sometimes I let this stark contrast fade into gray; I grow numb to the brightness of the light and chill of the dark. But, Art always manages to wake the part of the soul that grows weary at the profundity of light and dark. The two latest pieces of art to jar me happened this weekend: Annie Dillard's "Holy the Firm" and "Slumdog Millionare".

"Holy the Firm" has earned a place next to Wendell Berry on my bookshelf. Wow. I'm going to come back to this brief piece again and again. She explores questions that beg to be asked about a God that purports to be good. She writes with force, dexterity and humor about Julie Norwich and a dying moth that frame the abstract more purely than any abstraction. She avoids all things trite. She delves into the stark contrast between natural beauty and human suffering.

At one level, how can our language contain the word "mundane"? I should ache all the time from the beautiful, the miraculous, the adventurous, the funny. And, I should ache constantly from the evil, the callous, the cruel. Instead, I complain about the routine and rut of my life-- as if I've somehow "mastered" this period of my life. I complain about God's cruel sense of humor in lieu of revelling in his grace and mercy. Dillard's thoughts and writing jolted me into the richness, the complexity of my daily routine. Ah, that's why I read poetry... coffee for the soul.

I had an acquaintance talk about the "extravagance of dreaming". Honestly, it pissed me off. I wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her until some sense settled in her head. To call dreams and hope extravagant is analagous to categorizing air in the wants (versus needs) column. Dreams are the fumes that fuel our souls. If there were a mere one-to-one correlation between the reality of our lives and our perception of our lives would lead to the extinction of the human race. We have enough evidence of things unseen, things intangible that we can exist with hope. God help us if we were refused a dream.

As a Christian, I believe in Jesus and the Kingdom coming. I believe in transformation on both the micro and macro levels. "Slumdog Millionare" dealt with chiaroscuro and hope. The protagonist's identity rest in loving the "third muskateer". His character had a softness and truthfulness that provided light to the darkness of his brother's pragmatism and survival instinct. Ah, it was complex and disturbing, but ultimately redeeming. It was good. The violence and the cruelty were not gratuitous but central to the plot and characterization. The story was so complete that it engendered the rough reality with hope. The tightness of the story reminded me of the "all is grist". The form served the content. God is a good, thoughtful author; all the details, all the subplots aren't wasted or lost. I'm becoming a worthy protagonist and the climax is yet to come.

I recommend these two pieces of art as guides and reminders of the chiaroscuro in Starkville.