February 25th, 2014
I wish we were all born as we were supposed to be she says, drawing fractals on the table with a dry erase marker. Earlier Javi and Brandy exchanged rapid-fire insults at a speed I coudn't record, although I tried very hard to, because I believe their banter is proof of their eloquence and I plan to use this against them when they tell me they "can't write a paper". The room settles down and they search through the book for answers to their essay quiz. I am reading poetry I will introduce to them in a few weeks. Suddenly, a line I can't contain: Guys, the word Alaska means "where the sea breaks its back". I say. I don't get it, but it sounds real and deep. Yackayra says. I teach them to ask questions that will unlock. I want to tell them all that I am grateful for all my mistakes, in spite of the pain, and so I am glad I was not born a finished product. But I don't say these things because maybe if her father had been born a finished product he would have stayed. Maybe mine would have too. Connecticut is a word that means "beside the long tidal river". Beside the long tidal river we sit and learn and let the tides move us. We live on the tides of hope, and as they come in and out we make our hearts learn the rhythm. We ask questions and live there, in the asking, on the bank by the river. What you don't know can't save you, and we, we are in the business of redemption.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Monday, February 24, 2014
February 24th, 2014
By the time I got to school I felt very shaky and my bronchial tubes felt solidified, as if lined by cement. I haven't seen you in two weeks I said squarely to them tell me what's happened in yours lives. Are any of you married? Bankrupt? Jasmin admitted to menopause and we all laughed. When Javi came in I showed him the note that explained how he had insisted on throwing paper balls all over room. He smiled and said, well, I was playing basketball and the sub took the trash away and said "throw it on the floor", so I did. Then the sub said "You are ignorant" and I said "well, duh. you dont think i know that?" and he is so sincere that I choke on the cement in my bronchial tubes. What are some "good things" you'd like to share? You are back Leanna says shyly, and I think, was it me, was it really me who yesterday said that I hated education and teaching and would be happy never to see my students again? A thousand Javi's couldn't rival the ignorance of my complaint. Life begins again between hubris and humility and here, in this world, I can only keep one. Teaching is no big deal, I want to yell into the national debate, it's only a thousand dawns a day. it's only the re-creation of everything within the blink of every students' eye as second by second our lungs work and our minds spark and we share what it is to be maimed and still living.
By the time I got to school I felt very shaky and my bronchial tubes felt solidified, as if lined by cement. I haven't seen you in two weeks I said squarely to them tell me what's happened in yours lives. Are any of you married? Bankrupt? Jasmin admitted to menopause and we all laughed. When Javi came in I showed him the note that explained how he had insisted on throwing paper balls all over room. He smiled and said, well, I was playing basketball and the sub took the trash away and said "throw it on the floor", so I did. Then the sub said "You are ignorant" and I said "well, duh. you dont think i know that?" and he is so sincere that I choke on the cement in my bronchial tubes. What are some "good things" you'd like to share? You are back Leanna says shyly, and I think, was it me, was it really me who yesterday said that I hated education and teaching and would be happy never to see my students again? A thousand Javi's couldn't rival the ignorance of my complaint. Life begins again between hubris and humility and here, in this world, I can only keep one. Teaching is no big deal, I want to yell into the national debate, it's only a thousand dawns a day. it's only the re-creation of everything within the blink of every students' eye as second by second our lungs work and our minds spark and we share what it is to be maimed and still living.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
February 23rd, 2014
Genna came in quietly after the weekend at home and Davia and I stopped talking to listen
to the mood of her steps. She didn't answer when we first said hello, and then on the second
hello she said it back, flatly. As she came up the stairs she avoided eye contact and went
straight to her room. We both stood up and waited in the doorway of my room. So, is
everything ok? I finally said. She came out and stood to face us both and then said simply
she died and fell into Davia's arms. We listened to her sobs and when she pulled back she
told us how it happened and what it was like. We sat next to each other on the floor of my
bedroom, Davia sat on the bed, and we talked about death and everything it gives and takes
away. Were you there? I asked. Yes. She started breathing heavily and then, suddenly, she
opened her eyes wide, and then she was gone. Tears streamed down Davia's face as she
listened and she said What is better than having your baby and your baby's baby by your
side when you go? We laughed at the beauty and depth of Davia's empathy and talked about
what comes next and how it seems, eventually, that the other side is more welcoming than
this one, as it slowly, over a lifetime, becomes populated by everyone you love.
Genna came in quietly after the weekend at home and Davia and I stopped talking to listen
to the mood of her steps. She didn't answer when we first said hello, and then on the second
hello she said it back, flatly. As she came up the stairs she avoided eye contact and went
straight to her room. We both stood up and waited in the doorway of my room. So, is
everything ok? I finally said. She came out and stood to face us both and then said simply
she died and fell into Davia's arms. We listened to her sobs and when she pulled back she
told us how it happened and what it was like. We sat next to each other on the floor of my
bedroom, Davia sat on the bed, and we talked about death and everything it gives and takes
away. Were you there? I asked. Yes. She started breathing heavily and then, suddenly, she
opened her eyes wide, and then she was gone. Tears streamed down Davia's face as she
listened and she said What is better than having your baby and your baby's baby by your
side when you go? We laughed at the beauty and depth of Davia's empathy and talked about
what comes next and how it seems, eventually, that the other side is more welcoming than
this one, as it slowly, over a lifetime, becomes populated by everyone you love.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
February 21st, 2014
The single tear that dropped two nights ago moved so slowly down your cheek
that you were able to catch it with one finger and hold it against the light coming
through your window. This marvel of water and refraction stopped you for a
moment and you gazed at it, the mascara mixing with the salt, and the whole
thing still and held together by surface tension on the tip of your finger which you
rose to the light through the window. This is like something, but you're not sure
what. These are all notes and sketches anyway, these last three years and this one
too. No metaphor need be perfected yet, and later, when you really write, you will
come back to these years and this one and these cuttings and mine for the things
you saw. Today you have collected certain memories: the deep breathing of the yoga
you practiced, and how it felt very real at moments, and very farcical at others, the
waxy rind of cheese, a documentary on Rachmaninoff in which he speaks in ways
about composing that you feel, at moments, about living, sediment at the bottom
of a wine glass, and an entire harvest of snow that rises as vapor past your window.
The single tear that dropped two nights ago moved so slowly down your cheek
that you were able to catch it with one finger and hold it against the light coming
through your window. This marvel of water and refraction stopped you for a
moment and you gazed at it, the mascara mixing with the salt, and the whole
thing still and held together by surface tension on the tip of your finger which you
rose to the light through the window. This is like something, but you're not sure
what. These are all notes and sketches anyway, these last three years and this one
too. No metaphor need be perfected yet, and later, when you really write, you will
come back to these years and this one and these cuttings and mine for the things
you saw. Today you have collected certain memories: the deep breathing of the yoga
you practiced, and how it felt very real at moments, and very farcical at others, the
waxy rind of cheese, a documentary on Rachmaninoff in which he speaks in ways
about composing that you feel, at moments, about living, sediment at the bottom
of a wine glass, and an entire harvest of snow that rises as vapor past your window.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
February 20th, 2014
Slowly, like a drawbridge declining, this day will take back its meaning. Let us clarify: we do not mean we wish the memory to be dead, only that it is. This is a lesson I have had a hard time learning: that something is doesn't make it right. That something ceases to be doesn't mean it shouldn't have been. Do you know what it's like to lose something to irreversibility? No, not a breakup, dammit, a death. No, that is not a kind of death. It is nothing of the sort. You will know when you know, and there is only one door through which you may approach this truth. This is the last of it, the death tremors, I said today, and the only lie is that today has been empty. The death tremors visited me last night. There is a loaf of bread, a knife, some cheese, blackberries, and wine on my bedroom floor,
because despite, or because of, the pain of this illness, I wanted a glass of red wine. Let it be a symbol and a metaphor both, and a reminder of why we are where we are. You have very little of my mind now, and those parts in which you used to live I have learned to be very honorable with. This is just how it must be because I know too much of doorways and their irrevocable translation. There is more than splinters and warped wood, there is the leaning on the only sureness you know and staring into a new life: an unmooring under a sky of endless dark and invisible, distant stars.
February 19th, 2014
And now I see as one whose wet new eyes are just tightening in focus, that I hunger
for things for which I do not yet have an appetite. I utter words I don't know in a low
tone within myself as mist over a field of snow. Inside me the emptiness is just now
beginning to form itself into an outline for which I know no shape to fill. I am weak
and ravenous and full and very, very, strong. I am indestructible. I have become destroyer
of worlds, and only now, looking through piles of time to the first moment when destruction
was in our reach, have I become human. I hope I meet another of my kind. It is lonely
walking this earth with the weight of fallibility and disorder. It wears out my shoes and
all the cobblers have gone away for lunch forever and ever more. All we wanted to be are
structurelss clouds that break open over the hill and I, we even, all fall down as the water
rushes. If I must be the wandering human or the rushing water, I will choose neither
and ask to be the cracking earth that waits for both the human and the water, because the
only guarantee is that both will come, and in abundance. I have not been here very long
and my skin still burns in the sun, my lungs in the air, my eyes in the light.
Slowly, like a drawbridge declining, this day will take back its meaning. Let us clarify: we do not mean we wish the memory to be dead, only that it is. This is a lesson I have had a hard time learning: that something is doesn't make it right. That something ceases to be doesn't mean it shouldn't have been. Do you know what it's like to lose something to irreversibility? No, not a breakup, dammit, a death. No, that is not a kind of death. It is nothing of the sort. You will know when you know, and there is only one door through which you may approach this truth. This is the last of it, the death tremors, I said today, and the only lie is that today has been empty. The death tremors visited me last night. There is a loaf of bread, a knife, some cheese, blackberries, and wine on my bedroom floor,
because despite, or because of, the pain of this illness, I wanted a glass of red wine. Let it be a symbol and a metaphor both, and a reminder of why we are where we are. You have very little of my mind now, and those parts in which you used to live I have learned to be very honorable with. This is just how it must be because I know too much of doorways and their irrevocable translation. There is more than splinters and warped wood, there is the leaning on the only sureness you know and staring into a new life: an unmooring under a sky of endless dark and invisible, distant stars.
February 19th, 2014
And now I see as one whose wet new eyes are just tightening in focus, that I hunger
for things for which I do not yet have an appetite. I utter words I don't know in a low
tone within myself as mist over a field of snow. Inside me the emptiness is just now
beginning to form itself into an outline for which I know no shape to fill. I am weak
and ravenous and full and very, very, strong. I am indestructible. I have become destroyer
of worlds, and only now, looking through piles of time to the first moment when destruction
was in our reach, have I become human. I hope I meet another of my kind. It is lonely
walking this earth with the weight of fallibility and disorder. It wears out my shoes and
all the cobblers have gone away for lunch forever and ever more. All we wanted to be are
structurelss clouds that break open over the hill and I, we even, all fall down as the water
rushes. If I must be the wandering human or the rushing water, I will choose neither
and ask to be the cracking earth that waits for both the human and the water, because the
only guarantee is that both will come, and in abundance. I have not been here very long
and my skin still burns in the sun, my lungs in the air, my eyes in the light.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
February 18th, 2014
And in the summer the family was always driving back from the beach after dark, your father
singing in his bold and tuneless voice to the oldies station. Twenty years later you would tell this
to a man on the street just before midnight after he had followed you out of a bar and grabbed
your arm. Let me be your friend he kept saying, relentless like waves. You struggled away from his hands and finally said no! I don't want a friend it is late I have no more room in my life for the
voices of men. My father sang to all the songs were played in the bar tonight, and all I want is solitude and you fell, crying into this stranger’s arms, resistant and angry, and he held you, and
even touched your hair in an effort to close an invisible wound, honey honey he said, and you
hated him even more for it. This man was between the age of a lover and a father and as you
walked away your steps quickened to a run and he stood looking after you like a confused animal. Tonight you are mending your lungs by lying very still in bed and there is a dizziness that comes
with the stillness and you look out the window and trick yourself into thinking the reflection of
the ceiling light is the full moon until, yes, the ceiling light is not on, and yes, it is the full moon,
and how naked, how small, how unbegun you feel, lying very still in the view of the moon.
______________________________________________________
A new world has opened itself to you. There are swinging doors everywhere. This is not an awakening, you are already awake. In fact you can't sleep, in spite of the bronchitis, in spite of the codeine; there are too many trembling violin strings that you must hear, too many angles of the room to consider. It occurs to you when you look in the mirror that your face is swollen with words you haven't said yet and that your eyes are swollen with things you haven't seen yet and the thinness of your skin, its translucent pale, only confirms all of this as you can see ideas you haven't thought yet swimming below your surface. It's like a burning just beneath my skin you said to the PA today at the walk-in clinic. There is a softness to the edges of things, and while this is not wholly unpleasant, I don't feel quite right either. She nods loudly but she doesn't understand. She writes you out of work for the remainder of the week anyway and after some deliberation, you accept. When you walked to the college yesterday you passed an electric crosswalk sign knocked over into a snow bank. The orange hand was lit, and you wanted to hold it with an unmatched tenderness. What is next? You whisper to the heating coils in your room which are whispering back to you in a language you don't know. You think there is something constant about the sound though. It is an old language, like wind.
And in the summer the family was always driving back from the beach after dark, your father
singing in his bold and tuneless voice to the oldies station. Twenty years later you would tell this
to a man on the street just before midnight after he had followed you out of a bar and grabbed
your arm. Let me be your friend he kept saying, relentless like waves. You struggled away from his hands and finally said no! I don't want a friend it is late I have no more room in my life for the
voices of men. My father sang to all the songs were played in the bar tonight, and all I want is solitude and you fell, crying into this stranger’s arms, resistant and angry, and he held you, and
even touched your hair in an effort to close an invisible wound, honey honey he said, and you
hated him even more for it. This man was between the age of a lover and a father and as you
walked away your steps quickened to a run and he stood looking after you like a confused animal. Tonight you are mending your lungs by lying very still in bed and there is a dizziness that comes
with the stillness and you look out the window and trick yourself into thinking the reflection of
the ceiling light is the full moon until, yes, the ceiling light is not on, and yes, it is the full moon,
and how naked, how small, how unbegun you feel, lying very still in the view of the moon.
______________________________________________________
A new world has opened itself to you. There are swinging doors everywhere. This is not an awakening, you are already awake. In fact you can't sleep, in spite of the bronchitis, in spite of the codeine; there are too many trembling violin strings that you must hear, too many angles of the room to consider. It occurs to you when you look in the mirror that your face is swollen with words you haven't said yet and that your eyes are swollen with things you haven't seen yet and the thinness of your skin, its translucent pale, only confirms all of this as you can see ideas you haven't thought yet swimming below your surface. It's like a burning just beneath my skin you said to the PA today at the walk-in clinic. There is a softness to the edges of things, and while this is not wholly unpleasant, I don't feel quite right either. She nods loudly but she doesn't understand. She writes you out of work for the remainder of the week anyway and after some deliberation, you accept. When you walked to the college yesterday you passed an electric crosswalk sign knocked over into a snow bank. The orange hand was lit, and you wanted to hold it with an unmatched tenderness. What is next? You whisper to the heating coils in your room which are whispering back to you in a language you don't know. You think there is something constant about the sound though. It is an old language, like wind.
Monday, February 17, 2014
February 17th, 2014
The world began early; I am alive again. I walked to the college through much snow and ice and it was everything you would imagine of re-creation - and who wouldn't want this, a clean day and new roads through snow? There were paths forged in ice and it was as if You were saying "you see, others have walked this way. You are not alone" and so I rejoiced in the slide of boot print I stepped into and the drops if melting snow falling on me from the highway overpass. I said again, loudly in my head, "who wouldn't want this!" And nearly skipped at the glory of it all. I was one minute late for class and rushed in breathless and laughing and the students, gathered and waiting, smiled with forgiveness. I spoke with passion about semicolons and punctuation, how a simple mark on a page can carry the intonation we lose in the written word. There were furrowed brows and note-taking, and once again I felt overwhelmed by the position. How humbling to be listened to. How profound to have your words written down in a student's notebook. It was a small bird trembling in my hand, the responsibility of this, and also it was the weight of an entire building resting on my back as I strained to keep it from crushing us all. I closed the class with a poem and after, my student from Chile, gave me the names of two Chilean poets. How life gives back! How endless and weighty the jewels that adorn my soul!
The world began early; I am alive again. I walked to the college through much snow and ice and it was everything you would imagine of re-creation - and who wouldn't want this, a clean day and new roads through snow? There were paths forged in ice and it was as if You were saying "you see, others have walked this way. You are not alone" and so I rejoiced in the slide of boot print I stepped into and the drops if melting snow falling on me from the highway overpass. I said again, loudly in my head, "who wouldn't want this!" And nearly skipped at the glory of it all. I was one minute late for class and rushed in breathless and laughing and the students, gathered and waiting, smiled with forgiveness. I spoke with passion about semicolons and punctuation, how a simple mark on a page can carry the intonation we lose in the written word. There were furrowed brows and note-taking, and once again I felt overwhelmed by the position. How humbling to be listened to. How profound to have your words written down in a student's notebook. It was a small bird trembling in my hand, the responsibility of this, and also it was the weight of an entire building resting on my back as I strained to keep it from crushing us all. I closed the class with a poem and after, my student from Chile, gave me the names of two Chilean poets. How life gives back! How endless and weighty the jewels that adorn my soul!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)