leaning from a wind

this day.

2010-04-23T21:58:00.000-07:00

Fri, April 23, 2010 7:58:15 PM

my fingers are frozen from changing a tire in the rain. i sped over a pipe on the highway and rode sinking all the way into town. a woman at a stop light shouted the bad news. wondered what that rumbling torque was about.
i could not find my tools, or the secret space in which the manual promises they are hidden.
spares always seem way too small.

an angry mother called my principal this afternoon to complain that i was not fulfilling her daughter's iep accommodations. both of my directors came into my room to confront me while i was meeting with my induction mentor.
i called the mother after school and invited (instructed) her to observe first hand her daughter's educational experience monday morning. any other concerns you'd like to share? i grit my teeth.

my father sent the family an email announcing unsettling results from a colonoscopy this morning. he called it a "preview of coming attractions" as he enters old(er) age. i am laughing and not, noting all the ways his health is already compromised. i tell myself my parents are invincible and wonder what other myths i adore.

the rain, the rain, the rain.
i watched it strike obliquely.
the wind is begging for something.

this day.

i will meditate on letting go and chocolate.

.

(read this in a day or two).

2010-04-23T21:57:00.000-07:00

Fri, April 23, 2010 7:07:42 AM

this morning was like waking from dreams involving defiant nine-year-olds and then realizing heavily that it is indeed monday.
sad.

we were hang gliding over the city, but it was more like flying. i watched your legs behind you and thought you’d been doing this for a long time. your sail was pink and fluttering, and mine blended into the sky. i couldn’t see myself and we drifted apart.

on the ground, you asked how much fun i had. i didn’t want you to know i was clumsy and would need a lot of practice.

later, we took a train to california and i realized i lost you in security (?) in my rush for breakfast (coffee) on the run. the train was yellow with sunlight, and i was surrounded by families with well-behaved babies. i wondered how you would catch up and if you intended to.

finally (somehow) we were home (you lived here?), and it was snowing heavily. through the upstairs window i saw a fountain of white surging up from the ground and investigated. it was your friend snow blowing the walk. i addressed her with gratitude, but she was indifferent or distracted. somehow it occurred to me that she lived in the house on the corner. i asked why you hadn’t mentioned this and how i hadn’t noticed. everyone shrugged. you turned back to your computer to continue a piece about Money.

there was also something about a talented black cat.
and an amish town known for amazing root beer.
other pieces will come to me throughout the day.

happy day, whichever it is that you are reading this now.

.

triumph overall (spring).

2010-04-23T21:56:00.000-07:00

Springtime AM, PM

i am hunched over the vent in the corner of my living room, steeping in currents of heat. there is an uneven rock stack on a table to my left and three pussy willow stalks in a vase. my gram always said they symbolized spring.
it is cold here in the morning because the heat is down since my body ignites in sleep.

i just went outside to put the dogs in the kennel and the air smells so light and heavy and full it went right to my head. does that ever happen to you? in the midst of stress or angst, something you love unhinges you with what a gift it all is, and everything turns, and you are swinging.
i love that.

joy cycles, like everything that seems spring.

i read this tonight by annie dillard and just liked it: “nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives.”
i guess it sounds dark out of context, but there is triumph overall? live!

.

i don't really want to be a teacher.

2010-04-23T21:54:00.000-07:00

Thu, April 22, 2010 7:06:54 PM radical honesty.
Wed, April 14, 2010 10:40:49 PM finally.

i'm noticing on my conference schedule that all of these people will have no showed or canceled for the next hour. makes me happy and sad at the same time. my favorites so far are the older brother who explained his parents don't do conferences because they are hispanic, and the fathers who only ask about homework, repeatedly, and the mother who insists that her daughter should skip a grade like angelic. then there are the parents who ask me to separate their kid from this other kid, and others who pray that their children will be ready for fifth grade, and some who want parenting advice, which stumps me every time.
they smile so sweetly. these are their babies. i can't think of grades right away.

i’ve been running around like a crazy person this week at work, trying to manage the usual tension between what i believe and what i do, and a growing sense of inadequacy. this last leg will be a tough one. i make lists and lists and lists of everything i will do differently and better and more of, but the smell of grass hits at 3:35 and the students flee to their cars and i stare into the sun and forget it all.

do you ever want to be somewhere else? i wonder if i am living up to whoever i am.

.

a dream.

2010-04-23T21:53:00.000-07:00

Mon, March 29, 2010 10:35:06 PM very curious.

i bolted from bed this morning at 6:30 with no alarm. my body is trained to panic over schedules.

when i was a young girl i had vivid lucid dreams. i discovered in my sleep the ability to manipulate my environment as soon as i realized i was experiencing a dream world. with these powers, i was able to invite strawberry short cake to my birthday party, win unlimited trophies, fluffy chicks and pink carefree gum, and summon my brothers to silence by pointing. it was an incredible feeling. i was also able to escape nightmares or lucid dreams gone wrong by looking up and shooting my eyelids open. my greatest feelings of control occurred in sleep.

eventually i became too distracted by real life to pay so much energy to dreams. i didn't view this with despair until recently.

.

about writing.

2010-04-23T21:51:00.000-07:00

Wed, March 31, 2010 7:46:26 AM check yes or no; 10:49:41 PM a day.

we are working on driving our stories with description over action in the blue group. they are incredible writers, very playful. i pour over their words, stealing notebooks to photocopy, reading sentences aloud with wonder. children are lyrical. all this vigor and severity. the inside of their brain is just right there, spilled out and flashing bluntly. complete and incomplete. i ask them to explain it, but they don’t understand the question. everything is there.

that is the thing. this push to develop, to facilitate, guide, mold, indoctrinate, coerce. the lines are thin. i just want to enjoy them, but it is naive.

writing is a lot about control. but it can also be about release, or maybe i'm reframing. i have been called more comfortable with ideas than people, and writing feels like evidence of this. i have had to force myself into different kinds of interactions over the years.

i wrote a chapter book in middle school about freezing time. the main character had found this stop watch that could pause linear time and manipulate events. i realized at one point that i didn't understand the central conflict or how to end the story, so i plunged all the characters off the side of a bridge in a white fifteen-passenger van. it was the end of the school year so it seemed right.
i was also interested in parallel universes, and thought "the beginning of the end" was an incredible title for a novel on this subject. for some reason. a year later, the tv series 'sliders' appeared, and i swore i was robbed.
to this day no one believes me.

.

naming, carried away.

2010-04-23T21:50:00.000-07:00

Tue, March 30, 2010 8:43:37 PM naming; 3:33:45 PM carried away from what

i'm writing with frozen knuckles upon returning from a very informative trail tour. my parents take great pride in their work here. they construct fences and gardens and fix things which fail in fierce weather. the paths keep them busy, forcing through the woods with chainsaws and grading blades. my mom has painted modest signs naming each route: porcupine, clover, hillview circle, winding way.
they have so much joy here.

the drive to the cabin was nice. my parents narrate the journey every time, detailing the scenery with pride and enchantment. there is eddie, who does their septic field and clears the roads in the winter. he is down the street from the man who stores pontoons in shrink wrap. he might work with the guy who builds sheds and calls my dad carl (it is carlton), but they can’t remember. forest wheeler is head of citizens watch, and bill comes up from texas every year for the association meeting. then there are the plains where the amish plow enormous fields with the strength of six horses in rows, and over there is the second most famous trout river east of the mississippi. (“what makes it famous?” “it has a lot of trout.”) there is a tiny dive in town called “chat n’ chew,” and a gas station that cannot sell gas because of code violations. the folks who sell amazing jerky have a bear captive in a tennis cage. astounding. there is an artificial gator in a nearby swamp and a hill just north that marks the highest point in alcona county, which releases a quarterly newsletter announcing area critter citings.
who wouldn’t live here?

when we exited the truck, my mom spun in circles. dad headed for the barn door which was in need of repair. i took a lot of pictures of bark and sand and anticipation of spring.

.

waking, resting.

2010-04-23T21:48:00.000-07:00

Sun, March 28, 2010 8:06:20 AM waking; 9:26:23 PM resting.

it is finally quiet.
the bird clock just struck ten. it was the belted kingfisher.
the dogs are jingling in another room.
a car crescendos past the house about every six minutes. i hear everything.

i am sitting in my mother's craft room smothered by walls of old photos and inspirational quotes. there are scrapbook decals and balls of yarn and ceramic bluebirds strewn across the shelves. mary engelbreit is everywhere, and hints of a christian god. i slept deliriously on a minature doll bed in a room my mom has adorned with angels and doilies, and am trying to get over this terrible coffee and lack of sun. there were large blueberries this morning and three deer in the back yard. i'll be putting on a puppet show for my niece later today. we'll spend a lot of time driving. it really is good to be home.

.

blank and recent.

2010-01-30T16:39:00.000-08:00

.
Tuesday, January 13, 2010 8:47:20 PM

i thought i might use microsoft word, and was prompted to choose a template by this name, ‘blank and recent’. i could not seem to get it out of autocorrect and gave up, but it set me thinking.
it is me.

tsuki is home from the hospital today, but back tomorrow and the next. he has new pills and daily injections and must drink lots of water. there is risk of kidney damage or deafness. the doctors are confident he will heal quickly. i spent $723 tonight.

i look forward to the colbert report when i come home. it is in high def online now, and they've built a new set. it is good to see that the world is bigger than my own sadness, and that the sadness of everything can be funny. irony is the ultimate dichotomy. comedy, tragedy. opposing, but not oppositional.
or maybe it is death opposing life.
but death is irony as well. don't you think?

there is a neon green icon on my desktop that reads "2:00". it is an alarm i downloaded in mexico. i could not use my phone because of roaming charges, and i did not bring an alarm with me, although i did manage to remember four months worth of acne cream, peptol bismol and candles. the program plays a song that came as a sample with my itunes. bells, xylophone maybe. plucking. crawling. it is beautiful and so still. i remember waking to it with the roosters thinking "this is mexico in the morning". smiling.

.

wounded.

2010-01-30T16:38:00.000-08:00

.
Wednesday, January 15, 2010 5:32:38 PM

there is a lot of sadness happening around me.

i think of this, and then in the background there is port au prince, and vic chesnutt, and all the people with tragedies that creativity and a new perspective and maybe even time do not soothe.

some people are light feathered. i do not know what this means, but it came to me, those words together, and i thought i would just write them that way. they suffer like bugs at the peak of a cattail in a wind storm.

in my dreams, i know how to let go. it is relief. it does not matter if i land on grass or water and must clamber again frailly to the top, or cartwheel stiffly into the mouth of some creature in waiting, or plunk on my side with one eye to the clouds and breathe into death. it is not painful.
in my dreams, because in my life, i am not so graceful.
maybe none of us are.

tsuki had his plate removed yesterday. he contracted two new infections which require dangerous antibiotics. i am bringing him back daily to change his sugar bandage, which has been successful at forming new tissue to steadily close his wound. he is sad and sleepy, but lets me cuddle him on the floor and kiss him anywhere i want to.
citta is batting at his cone, and eating all his bouillon cubes out of the water dish, and licking his whole face and distracting him from pain. a good companion.

resiliency is a trait i think we will not need in other worlds.

.

vast.

2010-01-30T16:37:00.000-08:00

.
Thursday, January 14, 2010 5:51:59 PM

i think most of us are over the edge.
it looks like a vague severance of our soul intentions. that doesn’t mean that we are not doing good work, or connecting with others, or experiencing enlightened moments of gratitude in each day. but on some larger scale, we are wandering in this life, growing layers over our hearts. pausing too long. watching our own cycles with helpless and diffident awe. or maybe each life we endure the removal of some outer skin and feel our own fragility and tenderness and that is why everything can feel amplified. devastating, like tremendous.
i always have the sense, though, that something has to come off. i think of all the times i say i don’t know and wonder what if i do. what if i did not let myself get away with so many tricks.
metamorphosis has always struck me as an important word. i think of mountains, not butterflies.

seventeen of my report cards were returned to me this afternoon with piles of post-it note corrections for my spanish comments. why couldn’t they have revised these in the system, i thought, it would have taken less time. i felt punished. embarrassed. confounded by spanish grammar i accept i will never understand without a commitment to living in the language for so many years. retirement, maybe. i felt myself glaring at the hispanic woman who turned the wrong way into the school parking lot as i was attempting to peal out. you are the reason my evening will drain me, i thought. and then i was guilty. and changed the subject in my mind; i wonder if anyone would notice if i wore jeans tomorrow? why do i always get stuck in this lane? will the doctor know i am clumsy with syringes?

he did. he told me to do it like they do on tv. i laughed and forgave his condescension, since he cut my bandage bills in half. he has a lot of power.
men look like their penises. i think of that every time i see him, because he is kind of a dick. i dare myself to call him by his first name, because i am sure he would hate that. he might be gay if his natural impulses were not so concealed in some overconfident pretense of manhood.
i think of this about lots of men. i know it is not their fault, but i think it anyway.

.

edge.

2010-01-30T16:36:00.000-08:00

.
Friday, January 15, 2010 4:05:05 PM

my students are hilarious. they have catch phrases, and awkward hairdos, and bad comebacks and predictabilities. i am zen this week, accepting who they are, doling out check pluses and zeros and wet stamps and tickets and knowing it is what it is. i have not stressed over them or patronized them or shut them down in their nine-year-old egocentric glee. we have balanced each other out.
of course, i can't say this without immediately realizing that next week will be a challenge. this is the cycle. dawit will do nothing for one more day, and jonathan will make that irritating noise, and angela won't read the poem again in the morning and skyler will beg to be first at everything. angelic will care more about fifth grade and pedro will shout everything he speaks and valentina will vanish into a crowd of more competent others. joseph will smell badly and esau will mumble 'no' under his breath and german will draw everyone's illustrations for friday's reading response because he is that good. and paula will write amazing similes. and tc will cry when he moves his clothespin. and angie will speak like an adult and write like a toddler. i could go on, and i think i must soon.

.

in nature.

2010-01-30T16:35:00.000-08:00

.
Sunday, January 17, 2010 10:10:22 PM

in nature, everything is structured, even what appears as randomness; there may be no difference. i heard a quote once that mathematics is the language of god. i would use this defense if i chose to study it.

i have sliced my knees by mistake with the razor in symmetrical spots. it didn't hurt either time, but reminded me of how clumsy i have always been with my body, throwing it against paved and woodland surfaces and stretching it against mountains, and gravely spots, and persistent classroom obstacles, and lifting heavy things into its softest spots. i am not graceful. the blood trickles so gently and sticks to my jeans. i like the feeling of fabric on hairless skin, and the small bleeding is not gruesome. it spun with the water into the drain and i stood fascinated by the living flow of color inside me. they say that under the skin it is blue.

i want to kiss the earth today. the sun has been generous these days, and i have remembered that i am alive in the light. the dogs want more space, and tsuki needs practice remembering that his $7000 dollar leg is actually functional.

.

emotional intelligence.

2010-01-30T16:33:00.000-08:00

.

Monday, January 18, 2010 11:34:52 AM

i heard an interview with a doctor who went to therapy to internalize strategies for rewiring his brain to associate new feelings with the absolutist thoughts that were telling him "this will never work out,” and “you are a terrible surgeon”. he didn't know that he would not be eradicating these thoughts all together, only linking new judgments to them. he now teaches ten-year-olds to analyze their self-talk by filling in thought bubbles in comic strips, helping them to take perspective and then to reflect on their own intuitive reactions to given scenarios of stress. some see that they retreat; others confront. some feel shame, failure, or sense injustice and defend what is right. he says that we have more power than we think over our feelings, and that facing disappointment can feel good or bad depending on how we look at it. the students seemed to enjoy this point, or at the very least, the activity of reading and revising comic strips and talking about ideas.
what a great activity, i think to myself. before i ‘became’ a teacher, i would have thought of trying this with my own students. but i see i have now become so indoctrinated into some standardized framework of ‘effective’ lesson planning that i suspect i would not know how to defend the lack of academic rigor in any curriculum for emotional intelligence to my principal or myself. it is not strange anymore, what is expected. it is a language i speak. and because it is superficially safer to mimic the priorities of my conservative institution, and because most of my energy is being used to implement our holy grail of ‘balanced’ literacy instruction (and attend redundant meetings, and fashion wall decor portraying the image of scholarly precision and goal orientation, and gape over convoluted data exhibiting benchmark performance of student groups existing in another time and place), i do not spend my weekends researching ways to nurture emotional intelligence or character development or spiritual health in the classroom. it is a small miracle i get away with yoga before math.
when i approached my principal about the esl position that is opening next year, she was tentative. ‘i like the idea of you as an intervention teacher,’ she lied, ‘but i like you in the classroom, too.’
i feel like a food inebriated fly that is trapped on the edge of an open window, and does not know that it only needs to fly out to be free.

yesterday i called the police on a fight that broke out behind a coffee counter in colorado springs. a man, who several customers had complained was behaving disturbingly, lunged at the barista after he was asked to leave. the clerk, so thin and gangly, bled down his face after a heavy blow, and shouted repeatedly that he would defend himself as he inched back, and back, and back. the cake display was knocked over, and i could see the strange man reaching for things to strike or throw. i fled from the shop immediately and then wondered who i had left behind in danger. as i was on the phone with the police, the attacker was eventually thrust out of the cafe by several other customers who had rushed down the stairs to save the day. i could not believe what had happened.
i am fascinated by so many hatians who contest that god has invited this earth quake as an opportunity for the community to grow stronger. randomness is only random to those without omniscience. anything can happen at anytime. people say this.

there is too much to do today. the dogs, the car, the belated birthday dinner i promised my brother, the dreaded return call to my other, who is in jail. the sun is beckoning me to my nature of wild abandon. i will sing up the mountainside and know that in another life i was someone famous.

.

sarasvati.

2010-01-30T16:29:00.000-08:00

.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010 7:43:12 PM

jared called me last week to report that he needed a thousand dollars, “like a get out of jail free card”. i foolishly assumed he had dialed to confirm some amount he had sent to repay his last debt to me. i received his message in the car on voicemail, brief and unemotional. realizing that i was experiencing the launch of a panic attack, i tried to put the matter out of my mind and resist confronting any possible shadowy reasons for his arrest, or my willing role as the ostensible champion of the fatefully less fortunate in my family.
days later, my mother reported that jared was detained for driving without insurance or a license, and at last apprehended for his warrant out on fines due years prior in michigan. he had a court date today for the matter, which i would be astounded and relieved to hear he attended. i predict he will put in some months in the county jail, more months of community service, thousands in fees which he will work even more months to return.
my brothers are the seed of something inside of me, which swirled against my skin in utero but did not permeate my blood. i do not live their life only by a step of fortune, a degree of grit, an upbringing of favoritism. there is no telling why i look upon their vagrancy as an outsider, i have not acted in my life with intention enough to elude their plight of a cloudy existence. i think of aging friends, and realize this could befall me at any time. roaming, loss, a pale face in the mirror asking
what happened?
my mother cried apologies for her invented burden of emotion. “every time he tries to make a fresh start he just falls on his face,” she sighed, “i don’t know why.”
i cannot be as helpless as i imagine.

this morning at 8:38 i asked my students to declare something they were good at. our poem was about ‘bad-shot betty’ who displays terrible aim, and the schema question (i love it) invited them to explore their own talents. as i listened to them declare their skill in soccer, running, wrestling (angela!), writing, headstands underwater, and being a person (oh TC), i remembered that they are so, so beautiful. “this is important,” i described. “remember that you are here to discover what you are very good at. and if you do not know it yet, pay attention to what you love.”
i am good at giving good advice. :)

tomorrow is a late start day, and it will speed by. i realized this week that someday i will have to say goodbye to these tiny people, and that will be hard. i did not think we were very connected. it has surprised me.

.

anamga-madana-lekha.

2010-01-30T16:23:00.000-08:00

.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 9:31:27 PM

i could not get out of bed this morning. citta tried to wake me with kisses and snorts every time the alarm sounded. i hid under the blankets from each of her attacks, even though the air became dense and difficult to breathe. she loves the morning, as you know, trailing at my heels wherever i roam and flaunting everything that is hers. my yard! my bed! my food dish! my water! my brother! so hard to discipline an entertaining child.

i got caught up in exploring sanskrit last night. it is no wonder the language is studied like a religion, ceremonial, symbolic, ideological. frayer thinks he is clever designing concept maps and graphic organizers to help young minds absorb new words. but sanskrit is an original anthology of concept maps. volumes and volumes of archaic, affiliated transliterations. one word means heart, mind, intention, aim, memory, reflection, wish, all of these. interesting how ancient things seem closer to god. (why i love antique malls.) :)
it occurred to me as i shined my heart to the earth in yoga class tonight that sanskrit is the revived liturgical language of hinduism and buddhism, which is fascinating because one of my 2010 intentions is to study eastern religion, and i did not know what this meant until now.
yesterday morning i announced to my students that we were off on our boat to a faraway land in the east, and as we exited onto the shore, dawn was creeping. and we gazed from the indian sun to the faces of our friends and greeted each other in sanskrit.
our greeting commences the day, and we always choose some form of transportation to arrive wherever we might speak it.
last week we flew to haiti in a unicef cargo plane.
they say good morning in seventy-six languages.

things seem to be healing with tsuki. he gets his last injection tomorrow, which is a relief since i am not convinced i have executed the other nine properly. he cries each time, once squirming away with the syringe still fixed in his skin. i was told to pull back initially, confirming that i have not hit a vein, but there is really no time for precautions. tomorrow morning i will drop him off for yet another bandage change, and will spend the day practicing remembering to pick him up after school before class. linguistic analysis of english. we will see how that goes.

i am sleepy. my mind reels with one thousand anecdotes for every thought that surfaces, or doesn’t:
i enjoy the trickling water from the fish tank. it is the real reason i have not yet returned it to school.
getting into instant coffee. tragic or trendsetting?
the very tall plant looks melancholy and i do not know what else to try.
i am craving a food i haven’t experienced.
dishwasher is broken again and the water’s been sitting for a week and i can’t remember who fixed it last time and seem to have no paperwork backing the lifetime guarantee i recall or imagined.
i need to reach out more. i need to reach out more.
tomorrow is only thursday.
sleep is a gift.

.

together, alone.

2009-08-31T18:51:00.000-07:00

Saturday, July 11, 2009 4:31:53 AM

today will be the last day of my binge.

i can feel it. i’ve been dragging through my life this week, someone else’s life, all scheduled and strained and small. looking through people, over shoulders as they speak, holding my own tonsils still which swell and threaten some sudden surge of weeping. i watch my own thoughts, projected like a movie playing over every cell of me, and reluctantly practice not naming; just existing here.

but today i have raced through my senses, my history, on this bike. today i crawled inside of myself and lifted out of the fog, pushed my face into the air and made wind.
it is good to breathe a little.

it’s surprising how desensitized people are to distance. how practiced we are at condoning aloofness, witnessing each other move through the world without feeling, sharing, connecting. i realize that i am also guilty of this, of course, and think of my own integrity.
it is time for me to be more real. the friend i have always wanted.

i think of this as i tear through the evening on two wheels, a route i’ve never taken. cherry creek bike path all the way to the health center; i am mapping my way to work. the sun drips thickly, mocking time, and there are shadowy creeks and fractured stones and a thousand plodding bends littering my path. the air is wet and warm, the mutual breath of so many wandering animals, and wandering suburbanites, and very small wandering bugs. i want to take a picture each time i blink, and lay every image across the floor for strangers to see.
everything is beautiful.
i want to see the world.

but i suppose it isn’t possible, or even desirable, to witness beauty all the time. beauty that causes weakness and staggering. submersion in emotion, or disassociation in spirit, or creative exhilaration, constantly. i suppose it is important to come down once in a while in order to relate to the real world.
but there are lots of real worlds. because there are lots of different lenses. and a life that looks irresponsible/boring/chaotic to one, may seem liberating/tranquil/eccentric to another, with a million versions in between.

nevertheless,
i wonder if i prefer the idea of life, but not the reality. i have thought on this for a long time.
because i love both. but one is less threatening somehow, uncomplicated by the raw experience of work or pain.

i think i realized last night on my ride that since my world is turning, or rather, i am turning my world, i am not certain which reality i want to buy into. which ideas are mine. which behaviors i will exhibit out of fear, or love. what the difference really looks like anyway. then again, sometimes i believe that i’m not changing what i believe at all, but am instead becoming more open to contradictions and the experience of not deciding.
because i do know what i believe in. i just don’t always know what to do with it.

.

when the night lulls.

2009-08-31T18:34:00.000-07:00

Sunday, June 21, 2009 4:52:09 PM

i heard

that vulnerability is like raw tissue being exposed to the wind. the air both poisons and heals, like the growth of a scab, or the burning of wood into ash for the soil, or a vaccine coursing through the blood. faintly toxic. finally healing.

i want to live in this way, something risky. not the rush of candy or sunlight, but enduring and restorative. i want to face myself head on, knowing i can see in, feeling this is a gamble, and going for it. i want to be good in a way that is nourishing and lasts. i want to understand when the night lulls poetry and memories and secrets.

.

delicate and brave.

2009-08-31T18:27:00.000-07:00

Saturday, May 23, 2009 3:17:24 PM

there are three pink peonies that an old woman plucked from her garden and plopped in a champagne vase on my desk. pink isn’t really my color, but it’s the right one for petals like these, papery thin and dense and waving in the breeze off the open door. one of them was a tiny cabbage head yesterday, all clenched into a leafy ball and hiding. this morning when i arrived it was open like a velvet yawn, lush and light and gaping. just like that.

i am wondering how this happens, how things just bloom overnight, in an hour, in a moment. how at first there is a tightening, a twisted knot, a bud. and then there is the startling relief of growth and movement, and the air smells like sugar.

commitments.

2009-08-31T18:20:00.000-07:00

Monday, August 31, 2009 7:08:51 PM

march was not a good month for me, to put it lightly.

i had returned abruptly from an overambitious trip to mexico which ultimately defied my expectations, to discover winter still gripping each end of each day, idle and blurred and halfhearted. having no place in particular to go or be, i spent three weeks bouncing between hotels and hostels and the cold nostalgia of michigan, fragments of other people's homes. a relationship in which i had invested all of my energy and will and life was wretchedly dissolving, and i had no one and nothing to turn to in my despair, to my fault. i gave up on household chores, hating my temporary dwelling. smoked a lot of pot, needing sleep. wept on my bike and in lines and any time i found myself alone. at last, with the encouragement of my mother who had received a frightening email confessing my poetic wondering for suicide, i eventually made an effort for my own renewal and scheduled appointments with five therapists in one week.

i liked each one, and considered their questions and suggestions with important scrutiny. one of them wanted to know everything about my mother. another asked about my father. someone else spoke most of the time, spouting advice and explanations and eastern proverbs. i wasn't fond of him.
and after declaring all of my sorrow and suffering and woe, shifting in my chair and rolling my kleenex into a thousand shards of lint, one of the therapists asked pointedly: "so what are you committed to?"

i chose her.

and you have asked me. what are your commitments? and again, i paused, combing my complete past for answers. how can i not know? the question is about my love, my ideals, my life of course. what do i want on this journey? what will i ground myself in, and return to when i am lost or stuck or withdrawn? what do i want my partner to hold me accountable to? how shall i expect to grow?

these days are different now, i think. i'm trying to be a better person because i do not feel i have acted like one in much that i have done. i have quit jobs, deserting children and dear colleagues without delay. stolen people's wives, abandon all my family and friends. i have considered karma, the cosmic nature of the condition of my life, and thought on this (which was sent to me):

"The first Saturn Return is famous because it represents the first test of character and the structures a person has built their lives upon. According to traditions, should these structures be unsound or that a person is living out of touch with his or her true values, the Saturn Return will be a time of upheaval and limitations as Saturn forces him or her to jettison old concepts and worn out patterns of living. It is not uncommon for relationships and jobs to end during this time of life restructuring and reevaluation."

yes, a test of character and foundational values. a time of upheaval and strife. but i wasn't raised religiously; i have nothing prescribed to invest in. i haven't practiced specifics, defended my choices with essential convictions.

but, of course i have. it isn't so complicated, is it? we all act out of our own assumptions and beliefs whether we have named them or not. and we know when we have been true to ourselves and when we haven't, if we have any grasp of intuition.

what does my intuition want for me?

i once wrote a paper for school in which we were asked to define our "mantras" as teachers; what would we describe to our students mattered most? how would we rationalize our most vital learning? the professor explained how interesting the diversity of teacher mantras had been in each of his classes. some students have teachers who insist that organization and accuracy matters most; others defend curiosity and inquiry. some believed most in expeditionary and experiential learning, and others strive for the illusive mark of "rigor" and "excellence".

in believing that a true education is self-actualizing and contemplative, my mantra became "engage, reflect, transform". and although it was only a first effort and will likely develop alongside me, it was an eager attempt to merge school learning with life learning, my ultimate goal. authenticity. intentionality. truth.

i guess my point is that we are all on a trajectory of growth, and this is what i think it may look like. engagement with experience, reflection on it's meaning, transformation as a result. i want to welcome and witness my own growth. i want to be willing to evolve. to me, that is the most important thing: a willingness to respond to our own learning. to grow. to become more patient, more compassionate, more understanding, more thoughtful, more open, more reflective, more alive, more loving. more at peace. more connected. more human.
not perfect.
no, not perfect.
not even better, in the way that whoever we are in this moment is some failing of our selves, some fraction of what we could hope for, no. not in the way that we are less than what we should expect, inviting shame or diminishment. but only in the manner of acknowledging that we are becoming more whole.

but there is no absolute destination. i don't really believe in enlightenment.

there is something about love in all of this; the path is not a calculated process of self-improvement, but must fundamentally require the ability to love.

yes, love. what is love?
you have asked me, another question like a face at the window.

what do we do when we love ourselves, and each other?

.

luminary

2009-04-15T11:06:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, October 2, 2007 8:33:41PM

mom,

i am crying from your email. i read it out loud like a eulogy, because it is deserving of an audience who listens fiercely for the revival of wayward souls. i want to frame it in a watermark over a landscape, and tell my daughters that their grandma was a writer who wondered about everything. they will understand that you are strong and important, and they will try to live up to your name.

it shocks me to learn that we shared space yesterday in a calm and puzzling disquiet. i think that must mean something important that is just out of our reach.

i almost headed that email, "you will not understand any of this, and that will hurt me deeply". but i knew better.

tell me more about the autumn.

in the center of our house

2009-04-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

Sunday, April 27, 2008 11:03:45PM

in the center of our house

and all that we have made here:

this furniture, these curtains, the perfect rugs we have fastened to the floor. brave paint in every room, exalted patchwork. perilous computer wires slinking like ivy. dreadfully confused thermostat. trenches in the tender yellow floor (we will grate it to the soil). a two ton tv like a legendary gargoyle (it will never be moved). peeking white chips in the walls we have blundered. captive rugged yard, a battlefield for sparse crabgrass and sand. the light through seeping curtains against everything.

against everything.

(we were writing poetry.)

in the center of our house

i am cradling the birth of this life, our labor, i am cradling the beginning. and i am turning it in my hands and i am harvesting time.

i love you and i have always loved you. and this is a sure thing and a gamble.

i don’t know anything about what will come of this juncture, our apogee, but we have made something important of our past. we have created and we have struggled, marking our lifetimes with the unimagined experience of each other, a principal narrative, a renaissance. we can never neglect this.

in the center of our house

i am on my knees inside of one solitary instant, a summary of my life. these walls contain the pulsing grain of space that we have crafted out of hope.
we have been so fortunate and we are so fragile.

.

getting back.

2009-03-31T07:48:00.000-07:00

(change.)

2009-03-31T07:34:00.000-07:00

my process.

2009-03-31T06:21:00.000-07:00

Monday, March 30, 2009 7:16:10 PM

my process.

i am listening to this american life on my new ipod shuffle. it is green, like a six-spotted tiger beetle in july. i love six-spotted tiger beetles. i remember them from my seventh grade insect project. we had to collect something like 25 different bugs, and research all kinds of information about them like what they ate and where they lived and other names they were known by. but in order to identify and receive credit for them, they had to be suffocated to death in jars of cotton balls saturated with rubbing alcohol, and pinned to trays of styrofoam above perfect rectangular labels:

Scientific Name: Cicindela Sexguttata
Common Name: Six-Spotted Tiger Beetle
Species: North American Beetle
Family: Carabidae

my best friend maggie was an artist who wore pink bell-bottom jeans, and refused to kill anything for any reason. she was allowed to take photos instead if she had her parents sign a permission slip to opt out of the slaughter. i admired her, but i loved this project, and the leaf project after that. and the vegetable project after that. and the quail project after that, which i somehow did not manage to place for at the science fair, even though my investigation was wildly unique. but maggie’s defense of all creatures did make me look at living things differently. i didn’t used to feel that a bug’s life was worth protecting, or that a leaf should not be plucked from its tree, or that a quail and all of its friends and family may not enjoy being the subjects of clumsy and meddlesome adolescent schemes. (the blue ribbon went to the girl who dyed an embryo green.) but after witnessing young maggie’s conviction to something so noble, i suddenly felt some gratitude for the things that i worked with in science class, and i was able to notice suffering in a new way, undisclosed by the clues of a wincing face or voice.

i found maggie on facebook last week. she is thin and blonde and conventionally beautiful. her picture defied my memory of her, alternative and windswept and small.

looking back, i wish someone would have told me you could make a living doing this, learning about bugs. i never took anything in school seriously because i didn’t know that one day i would need to decide what i loved enough to make a life out of. i guess teachers tell kids that all the time, “you’re gonna need to know this!” but it just isn’t real. school is school and life is life and there isn’t really any planning ahead.

my brilliant plan.

that is the name of the this american life program i am listening to. “ideas that arrive in a flash of inspiration, and then what happens next,” ira says.
i like that so much.
and i like stories.

i’m going to write something called “we don’t take the bus”.
because i witnessed such interesting interactions today from 12:01 to 12:56, and 1:32 to 2:38PM. the 16L runs all the way down colfax, and you must know where i’m going with this. i viewed a documentary produced by a fellow denverite in 2004 about colfax avenue. this road has great history and personality and symbolism, of course. i watched myself react to the people who ride the 16L. odors of rum and morning breath and sweaty, sagging fabric. small sense of privacy and space and social boundaries. i watched myself when the bus driver stopped to lift an extremely large woman in a wheel chair slowly into the aisle, give directions repeatedly to a young man in search of the nearest shelter, explain the return route to the restless woman who declared continuously to “blame it on the alcohol”. ‘i’m going to be late,’ i kept thinking, and then, ‘no. have some compassion’.

no, have some compassion. have some compassion.

i felt this way in mexico a lot, noticing my impatience, redirecting my judgment. it was so good for me, but eventually too exhausting. i needed some kind of relief in between where i could remember who i was, what i liked, how i did things. it is important, i think. or is it? does complete compassion mean full and total acceptance of all ways of doing things? are concepts like “safe” or “healthy” just as subjective as “right” or “good”?
the people on the bus would have a lot to say about this.

i like riding the bus. environments of clear segregation really interest me. churches and gay bars and neighborhood schools. and i like places where integration is available, but resisted. airports and long lines and college campuses. (and neighborhood schools.) they are like truth tellers, because they make you feel something about yourself. they present some comparison or variance, and make you think about where you fit in. and what makes you uncomfortable. and why.

we don’t ride the bus.

well.

my mouth is sticky and my cafe au lait is cold. i am sitting at daz bog across the room from a man wearing a long, red-and-black-striped felt top hat. he is sporting very black sunglasses and a sharp, sleeping face.
the woman he is talking to is always here. must be 85. slumps in her mobility scooter facing the window, talking about her cats and her girlfriend, whom i have never seen.
the girl next to me is responsible for the security of my power cord, but she keeps bumping it out of the socket with the inside of her knee.
and the gentleman next to her just asked our row if the word laptop is one word or two.

i could go on.

you know, there never was a people watching project at school. if there was, i might have known what i loved enough to make a life out of. instead, there are only glimpses, and a million possibilities. i could coordinate educational programming at an art center, or teach 14-18 year olds with mental and emotional disabilities how to read, or run after school programming for a girl’s inc. female empowerment course.

but maybe i’ll just start collecting bugs again.

and this time i’ll take pictures.

.

home, again.

2009-03-17T08:45:00.001-07:00

what does home mean to you?

your food is scattered throughout the city, west and north and central, a crumb trail dotting your kitchens in a frame on a map. now another, then another, until you have bridged all the corners of your life here, until you can reason every turn, until you discover your own unfolding.

no matter where you are, you will live here. in these homes.

there were warm cookies on your vintage golden counter top. they were thin and tawny and puddled at the edges, as cookies without packages are. flawlessly misshapen and fragile and faintly grainy from too much sugar. lifted from fraying recipe books that love crisco and gluten and lots of eggs and butter in heavy sticks. cumbrous electric mixers. red ruffled aprons. aspiring middleclass cupboards. (they were white; she painted them white.)

and everything just built up around that view without asking, and the mountains are hidden behind hills of treetops and lampposts, and the new roads invite such swift and cursory travels along that fence.

is it tragic?
is it romantic?

yes, we are (home)made from and (home)grown by and (home)bound to our homes. and entrapped and displaced and divided, it’s true. they remember how we lived, to uphold us, to spite us. they call to us from new rooms and carpet and trees that appear inside someone else’s memory, and old floors and walls and windows that never budged.

of course, we are like them.

parking

2009-02-20T07:04:00.000-08:00

spinning

2008-12-27T22:50:00.000-08:00

2004

is there a reducible self, apart from the context of a person/place/thing? is it arrogant to imagine so? a subject, divorced from an object, divorced from an other? do we project our own privilege in posing this quest-ion? & is essentialiing a righteous goal? becoming absolute? is this true to reality? ("reality," "identity"; subjectivity).. what relationship exists between this endeavor, & that of "people-pleasing"? are they related? what purpose do they serve to self-hood? & how do we place a value-judgment on this? how do truth and portrayal negotiate roles in identity? and how do they exist together - in opposition? in alignment? in necessary 'balance', or congruence? what scale can 'self-improvement' be founded on with these musings? what beliefs do we have about 'self' that inform the choices we make to live?

unemployed

2008-12-27T22:35:00.000-08:00

July 15th, 2004

i imagine she is brown, older, very, very kind. and happy now. smiling. employed.
employed.

i don't know how to experience rejection; i construct myself at the interview, childlike. terribly vague and naive. they can't wait to go. they're wanting to roll their eyes, as i speak about my experience. my young life.
i don't know enough.
the wrong people were rooting for me.
i believed too much in myself.
underinvested.
they were mean, and controlling, and immediately contradicting.

(none of this is true.)

what went wrong? the verdict is not in my favor. the variables are jumbled and distorted. i have no insights about my past.

and how do i confront my own unknowing? i pretend drastic choices. i won't sleep. i'll have no food. i'll take up smoking. throw up a lot. snap pictures of everything. write about everyone who lost something, mostly me. i'll leave the car parked, forever. i'll wear my disillusionment, and guard myself from my life. candid, unrelenting life.
i had too much faith in possibility.

i was sitting with coffee, and karen. she was sensitive, curious, cautiously concerned. she was not sure what i needed. (i resented us both, lacking direction, having distance.) a small gray bird hopped to our table for food. i felt special, and watched it closely. karen tipped an empty cup, and it flew to the next table, startled. the women there did not see that it wanted to be noticed. it did not notice that i wanted to be seen. our encounters are random, self-motivated, unimpressionable. i hate that selfish bird. gray bird. (i loved it until it took me for granted.)

we drive to go car shopping. make plans for the garden. there are fleeting sentences and fused colors in my head; i want to go home. i have no memory of myself. i don't know where i am. (they make me cry.)

and you remind me in a letter i received today of my car payments.
economics is a cultural trap. i fucking hate money.

and i understand hopelessness in one petrifying moment. (i am standing sunburned with a sign at the end of a highway exit. people pass, with varying degrees of sympathy: "can't get work. anything helps. god bless.")

.

joyful tandem

2008-12-27T22:20:00.000-08:00

July 15th, 2004

joyful tandem, i have received your scribbles with a letter from another of my past (figures, preceding me). they were opened solidly, in the mood that made them (i presume), a piece of your self's, selves, drawing into me darkly. there is something about distance in this. we are tied together, and alwys away from what we believe to know.
i should know,
not to read your mail in a storm, in a state of perfectly composed Day.
i weigh your differences on my brow, and note (as they say) a coincidence. a collective thought. the face of some existential musing, infusing.
this place is immediate.

.

a level voice

2008-12-27T15:32:00.001-08:00

i want to blog about everything. things that are still, things that grow, advertising, grocery stores, what the dog did, how to kill time, startling colors and surfaces and breaths of air, pieces of passing conversations, small adventures, thoughts upon waking, what the earth would say, tiny lies, image and city, the myth of aging, the labor of history, acts of compassion, the light the light the light, the shadows, one stranger, two strangers talking, making breakfast, eating bread, relics of memory, love of course, everywhere there is tension, symbolism, noise, collections to have, questions to voyage, what matters or doesn’t, how to understand.

and on.

and then i realize that i would rather simply write about these things.

there must be one thousand ways to express oneself and one million ways to share. what does it mean to choose blogging? if i were to blog about my life, its details and images and prying amusements, it seems i would be equally suited to shout my reflections to a crowd of strangers, pulsing the end of my speeches with “anyone..?”. people would smile, or shrug, and one may rarely raise a hand, shadowing all my intentions. and everyone would soon disperse, having not stayed long at all, and shuffling, and my body would feel so strange from the toil of everything unmet.
displaced.
mis-fit.

blogging blends anonymity with the impression of celebrity, and some parody of dialogue. is it novel? is it triumphant? is it awkward? is it purely flawed? i wonder between the format and the motive:
? if i write to hear myself think, i may try keeping a diary, and
? if i write to share my meanderings with others, i could draft an email, and
? if i write to illicit feedback, i ought to have a conversation into someone else’s eyes.
blogging may work to represent the voice of a cause, to organize efforts, to unite minds across distance. but as a personal, solitary enterprise, there must be some combination of an author who is otherwise unoccupied, self-regarding, timid, or spectacular, and a reader who is suspiciously available, indulging, or exceedingly devoted.

there are other explanations, of course.
but i wouldn’t buy any of them.

i am not a private person. i don’t keep secrets or fear light or hold fragile keepsakes against my chest. but i keep a level voice, and it matters who i speak to. i don’t distribute mass email updates, and i’m not inclined to send along forwards, and i have never mailed out year-end greeting cards with my summarized life across the reverse side of a photo of my dog. i don’t take three-way phone calls. and i don’t accumulate my poetry for open mic night. and i don’t sing in front of crowds.
and i don’t blog.

but i will write, in this electric journal, in this glaring, pixeled light. that is called a blog. i will paint a space and rest here and nurture it. and i suppose it will be good to imagine that others may be listening, sometime, but there are no fanfares.

and i mean that as a relief.

2008-12-27T08:29:00.000-08:00

sugar cookies and private kisses.

windows and cages

2008-12-27T07:52:00.000-08:00

2008-12-16T17:26:00.000-08:00

sun brittled.

2008-12-16T17:22:00.000-08:00

closed on saturday.

deciding to leave

2008-12-10T10:48:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, November 12, 2008 1:48:02

it is thrilling.

i feel like leaving for mexico is the best idea i have had in so many years. it is a recommitment to what i love, and it serves all sides of me. it will be challenging and poetic and important, and people who don't understand this as an artistic act will value it as an educational exploit nonetheless. and i am okay with that, because it will help me to move creatively in disguise, while hiding nothing, along the lines of power that are already defined. it is my metamorphosis and my manipulation.

and in another way, how could i be a scholarly contributor to the field of literacy reform as a monolingual person? and more importantly, why would i want to be? it doesn’t have to be about pedagogy; this will just happen. it will spill over, an organically integrated form of my heart and mind, at last. i already think bilingually, you see, but i have only one language to speak it. this has been a problem, a way of feeling trapped. perhaps i should speak a hundred languages for the way that i imagine the world.

this is it.

general devastation, which words fail to convey, but oh well.

2008-12-10T10:25:00.000-08:00

Monday, November 3, 2008 8:42:54 PM

i spend all of these days outwitting the edge, orbiting the city, leaning from a wind, the incurable point that i am wandering. or swinging. or rocking in one place like an injured child
like the motion inside a cage made of windows
please let the day be over

i am so alone, i will say it plainly. it will not wear the glittery enchantment of images anyway, there is too much apparent. again and again i have isolated myself in a way that has no loyalties, not art, not song, not cynicism,
and i am sorry

i would scratch a hole in my head, pry out the piece that is screaming, hold my breath in the other hand, make two fists, be fiercely still
be nothing

i would confess everything
i would thaw into the floor through my eyes, i would run like a machine, to feel nothing of my bones crashing
i would tower like a god, to see everything around the pain and believe that it is small

what have i done?
(this is the voice that comes out of me)
i don’t know what is joyful
i don’t know what is joyful.

there is nothing trustworthy.

i don’t know who i am, i don’t know what i love. everything is a memory, or a tale. or i faked it. yes, i faked it. i pretended that i had enough or knew enough or was enough to be named in some way, but now i am not named in any way, and i can only see the holes. like outlets. like gulfs.
doesn’t that make sense? won’t you agree, and then i will not be invisible?
and then?

everything goes away.
i have no account of myself at any stage in time. all of my records are crafted, or lost. how is this possible? what will it bear on me? i have gaped at a burning screen of my life, of my love, until everything was white. there has been damage. my sockets bleed clear.

(this is the voice that comes out of me)
what am i going to do
what am i going to do

and other things, like:
oh god

and
there is no one here

i cannot think of what is next. i tremor my knees under tables and swallow so much coffee when my guts are already spilling and watch my own image on glossy surfaces. i wake in the morning with anxiety for dreams. the darkness concerns me. there is only the shadow of obligation. of constancy. devotion plays against time.
you are not reliable.
i am not reliable.

i am imitating versions of a person in a world, but none of it is sincere. bumper stickers have more integrity. i have thought of this.

it is always over.
that's all.

.

coffee and pausing

2008-12-10T10:09:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, August 20, 2008 11:41:11 AM

coffee hangs against my veins like this reaching white hue over denver. i am waking slowly to the day, which has not announced itself with the garish sun, or the motion of people with their cars and dogs and duties. i stand at the window yawning my naive severance from the condition of labor, and out of my fondest diligent custom, i turn to musing.

my day is wildly free. i love that word, wild. it is so real and unfamiliar. the opposite of amazing, or fine, or cool, which are excessive and tired and subtly unconvincing. i don’t like words like that.

a family just walked by across the street. (my street.) a large hobbling father with three young sons. the eldest gripped the small hand of his young brother, and the youngest trailed behind with a store bought bunt cake in one shifty hand. i wonder where they could be headed at 10:30 in the morning with a bunt cake, and why they are not in school. the cake could be an offering to a teacher, perhaps, a sugary persuasion to overlook flagrant tardiness. a student once tried that on me with a large milky coffee. i hugged him and asked him to quietly take a seat.
just terrible.

what is it about coffee that urges me to find truce to the world? it could not be all that welcome caffeine, because i feel this sense of repose even before the first mouthful. perhaps i am conditioned to associate the experience of coffee with some pacified setting. wine is also like that, although there is a greater sense of mischief and blitheness.
and sex.

i want to sit with wine and the coy premise of sex, and rise after hours against navy walls and curtains and soft breaths of the fan, devastating plans of early coffee and seated calm. beautiful distractions.

i am idle on my couch again. there are workers coming in and out of cars along the street. (my street.) i should probably step into the shower and finish my (tuesday) errands before reading and class. i must think of class as an adventure and not an obligation, although it is both. yes, it is both, so i am only wildly free until 5:30.

i love our times apart. it is like strolling in a gallery with my hand on my chin, gazing for new surfaces and making up stories. it is the private moments of reflection, when i reach more fully in my affection. people must wonder why i smile as i go.

my giant espresso machine hums and my new necklaces shine primely and my sunflowers swallow water through their green stalking shells.
it is too obvious.

.

men

2008-12-08T18:57:00.000-08:00

.

Thursday, June 19, 2008 11:22:25 PM

i was listening to a story today about the lord's resistance army, a self-proclaimed christian guerrilla force in africa known for its brutality and widespread human rights violations. its leader, whose name i do not wish to keep in my head, claims to be the voice of god and the holy spirit and believes his army to be an established theocratic state. the group had initially targeted the ugandan government, but turned on civilians 18 years ago when civil defense militia were sent into villages to protect the communities living there. yes. this war has been going on for more than 18 years. the philosophy behind the rebellion is not clearly understood, other than to establish the ethnic cleansing of non-believers.

aside from murder and mutilation, the army is best known for the mass abduction of children and sexual enslavement, including the prevalent public rape of women in front of their own families and communities. in addition to psychopathic behavior, this is believed to be a political tactic, a warfare weapon, to apply overwhelming humiliation and fear. the children who are stolen from their homes are often forced to kill their own siblings and parents, so that they will never be allowed to return to their villages if they manage to flee from the army's malicious grasp.

i was stuck on these images for some time, and didn't catch what is being done to stop this.

i have to keep my headphones in when i'm biking. i pass by three rescue missions along park avenue twice a day, and there are so many eyes and voices. i will not avoid the crowds; i have to see the people who have been damaged and tossed away, or i will forget them. i will forget their faces and my relationship to their lives. this, of course, is not the same as doing something. i know i am not doing anything to understand them, to help them. when i moved to denver in 2004, i planned to spend a summer interviewing the women waiting in the lines for beds. writing about them, and their childhoods, and the pigeons.

but the men cackle. so many men, punished by life, and dirty, and mean. so many stumbling through the streets, shouting things at me through holes in their teeth, through leathered faces and red glassy eyes. i was naive once, and smiled at them; they thought i wanted something and shocked me with terrible words. i am not brave enough to face this.

when i ride by, i think about their formless eyes on me, their heads turned widely. tracking me. i feel naked every time and wish that i had worn more clothes, or been very ugly. invisible, or feared. i make sure my music is up before crossing 21ts street, so i won't take their foul invitations home with me. so that i don't consume myself with how i should have answered, so i don't feel silenced and used. so that i don't leap from my bike and swing my fists to their flapping mouths. i dream of this, you know.

i don't know what it is, but all of these men have been hitting on me lately. whistling from their cars, singing about me from their counters. telling me their names, asking me mine. smiling with their eyebrows and presumptions and handing me my purchases. slowly. with gratitude.

i am appreciative, i suppose. but so unmoved. there is so much entitlement in men. i fixate on this constantly. the ways they make assumptions, use up space, declare their knowledge and opinions and nearsighted truths. they look at me with the confidence they were born in. and they walk too close to me, and see themselves everywhere, and invite their importance into my thoughts.

it is all so obvious, i know. too obvious. but it festers sometimes when i don't call it out.

and we don't call it out. we let our boys grow into men who feel unrestricted, who impose their presence and demands. sometimes accidentally, and sometimes carelessly, and sometimes with incredible, soulless violence.

i want to know how this happens. i want to know if there will always be the manifestation of a dominant force that is oblivious and hurtful. i want to know how i accept this, and impersonate this, and protest this in my life. i want to know where my power is at all times.

my nephew was born tuesday morning at 8:42 am.

i hope it is more than likely that he will develop great and profound compassion in all of his approaching years, and will not be absorbed instead into society's troubled way of explaining manhood.

.

only moments

2008-12-08T18:52:00.000-08:00

.

Friday, June 13, 2008 11:43:31 PM

biking through the city at night is an important urban experience. everything is lit from underneath like a stage and there are pulsing shadows over all of the surfaces that hold me. a perfect metropolitan heartbeat.
i am throwing myself down side by side, racing against wind and life in circles and loaded turns and dwelling in the present moments of a thousand other souls. i gaze into the dioramas of other people’s homes and friday night courtings and gentle walks along the river. i can see everything in a half an hour: the dark anonymity of an unlit block, tired and shifty drifters, the dizzy parting of a long dates, flickering currents and sprinklers awry. moaning bus stations and quiet stoplights and neon signs burning against dark churches and delis and ice cream shops. speeding police cars. one gleaming highway. limp underbellies of every scorched leaf that snubbed the sun. the grass still smells, and the street is still warm, and all of the children have gone to bed.
no twenty yards are the same. everything is hard and then soft again. light, and instantly gone.
this is familiar.
and i am taking all of these images with me so that i can understand why i am like them. i will discover myself, attentive and invisible and longing, and this will be peaceful. if only for a moment.

.

nesting

2008-12-08T18:45:00.000-08:00

.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008 8:48:37 AM

it could be the coffee.
and it probably is. but i have this fantastic sense that the day will be rich.

i bought a vacuum cleaner last night, and some things for the kitchen. i'm sure this could be it, too. when i build this home up again, when i force myself to make decisions about who i am in a set of nice knives, or a dark wooden dresser, or a very long and expensive sofa, i will know more about who i am when i leave here. it seems backwards, but it makes sense to me. i am learning how to manifest myself into a physical world. i am nesting.

i have done this before, but it has not been so serious. i was 19, or 23, or inherited everything from someone else and agreed that was what i would look like. and now i have all of these rooms that may never really be mine. and i will fill them joyfully, and not even think about what might happen to all of that money.
why do i think about what might happen to all of that money?

i am going to run to the shower and think about what the bathroom needs, and dress in my bedroom and survey that, too. i am going to leave work early today on a quest for my living room in this city, and i am going to buy a lawn mower online, when i should be taking calls.

and i will replace that fucking hammock.

.

there are a gazillion stories

2008-12-08T18:25:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, June 10, 2008 10:30:33 PM

all of these people are testing me, all of these people. they visit me in my places and draw me out, asking all kinds of questions. and i have chosen to engage so fully that i worry in every moment i find myself alone. (my own voice amplifies.)

it is good meeting people, and learning new names. having visits. being kind. this is something i love about teaching, and it carries over. i think about winter, when i will take the bus. and i wonder if i will stare straight ahead and lift the corners of my eyebrows. i am good at this: don’t talk to me, i’ll hate you. don’t put your thoughts all over my body, lift your cell phone with pronouncements, lean your bag against my thigh. i think about the men who scrape their heels along the street, staggering for my eyes, splintered by the sun and dark travels. i think about how i have honked and cursed them and never given out a dollar except for once when it was earned. (it has been four years.) i think about the pumping highway. i think about the pigeons.

i think about walking through this life, and every minute, just missing it. i think about my anger and my apathy, my unintention, my fear of experience.

and today was a day that i was not that person. and these days have been like that.

what the hell is going on?

there are a gazillion stories.
and they are just sitting there.
i want to take all the risks, and i want them to be about people. i want to acknowledge their eyes and invite them to share, because i am good at this too. and it feels better. i want to be afraid. i want to displace the order, the expectation. i want to invite myself into this version of me, and i want to stay devoted.

is it possible? is it possible that this is about love? and can i commit to a principle even if it turns? can i be self sacrificing? is this important, or expected? is it necessary? is it the same? i should know what allegiance i will be most attached to, if i am to be intentional.

but i don’t know what the hell is going on.

heavy walking

2008-12-08T18:20:00.000-08:00

Sunday, May 11, 2008 8:25:13 PM

i am raking the grime beneath my fingernails and testing my skin for sunburns. i consider a career amongst nature and wonder if it could be possible to tire of faraway landscapes and tall skies. my toes are sore from stretching against the dusty ribbon of my shoes and my shirt has finally dried loosely on my back. i am resting.

the mountains are littered with shiny hulking cars, and white people gripping walking sticks and taut leashes and the arms of their small children. sometimes i climb off the trail up the steep edges just to feel i am not one of them. there are thorny flowering plants and tiny sunbleached bones and flawlessly cornered rocks here. tsuki zigzags through patches of shade and we act like pioneers.

i love the kind of freedom sun invites.

my hike today was difficult and beautiful and fully symbolic. i knew this when i realized i had forgotten to pack my music. all of my thoughts circled loudly until i spoke them to the scenery like a sermon. the air was quiet and promised to understand.

it isn’t easy, leaving. the act of departure is like digging in a cavern and expecting to find precious things. everything in my life has changed these past months because what i have loved was killing me. have i cherished my own pain? has it grown into me like a root through a steel fence? have i come to expect that my devotions will be strenuous and complicated?

you are complicated. you are a new mystery that is still pure and sincere. but there is a delicate trace of unease, because i have been so surprised. will you disappear? will i need to be rescued? will this be a lesson? and could i bear it?

what is the worth of vulnerability? why do we nod graciously when we must let go? my grandfather loved very little so that he would not be missed at his death, and he accomplished this. i did not mourn him, and i do not remember him. he believed he was cultivating the greatest gift, that we would not have sorrow. i judged him once, but now i reconsider.

and what to do now.. is there something to learn or will i do it again, giving myself over until i cannot recognize who wrote these words? i believe in transcendence but i cannot fathom where i have been. i am guarding against emotion because i sense it will overtake me and be of no use.

i discovered an assembly of thin trees at windy peak that were bare at eye level. sap bled from the exposed bark in perfect fat beads, clear like water but sticky and sheathed. there were clumps of black fur caught in the blonde shards, and i could see the imprint of claws in threes. i wondered if the bear who lived nearby had marked this intentionally so that i would know i was trespassing.

it was time to go home.

there is nothing like this, leaving the mountains. i drive away with grief and renewal, side by side.
and i will go again in days and find stunning rocks to keep and the trails will not mind if i stray.

against forgetting

2008-12-08T17:50:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, April 22, 2008 10:53:00 PM

my gram is a tale of falling in love. she died at 52 from various forms of cancer. her illness was diagnosed when i was in third grade. i remember this because i wrote about “the canswer zapper” (like “answer,” by mistake) in a small, white, hard-cover journal mrs. sutherland (i remember the names of all of my teachers) handed out for free-writing. hard-cover books are special to young people, especially the kind with blank pages that beg for important words. i knew the story had to be about my gram. in awkward cursive along vivid pages, i wrote my best rendition of radiation therapy, which i understood to be a highly technical alien-like gun that shot healing lasers and was very expensive. in the story, my gram had earned the right to receive free treatment from the canswer zapper by the obvious nature of her good will and sheer perfection. immediately, she was healed and lived happily ever after, feeding the ducks and eating raspberry jam on toast past bedtime with her favorite (and only) granddaughter.

of course, the real story ended differently. gram’s health declined quickly. her handwriting in her letters became more and more stilted, and soon she stopped sending them at all. she apologized for this in advance, knowing it was coming. i didn’t understand. my mother had her placed in a nursing home (and later, another) and took me to see her often, not because i missed her (and i did, severely), but because she needed me. i remember these visits with my body. the sapid strawberry hard candies at the front counter, which i hated but always accepted kindly when they were offered upon our every arrival. the palpable smell of the hallways, her room, the oatmeal on her collar. the color of her pajamas in mid-day, the plain aprons on the nurses, the dryness of her mouth from refusing to eat. i remember most gravely the piercing feel of her fingernails in my arms when we hugged goodbye. i always needed help removing them. she could not speak, but i knew what she meant.

my mother would cry in the car, always apologizing. she thought she was putting me through something appalling and unfair, but i believed instead that she finally trusted me. i had a role in all of this. and it was scary, but of course that didn’t matter.

my mom doesn’t like me remembering my gram in this way; it seems morbid and dreadful to her i suppose. but these were the moments that i took care of the people i loved the most. they needed me and i understood this. these memories settled deeper in my mind than all the others. i was only ten.

shortly after gram's passing, my mom had once told me while folding clothes in her bedroom that she could hear her mother, her voice, her guidance, and asked if i had this gift too. i remember the shirt i was wearing then; i stared down at it in disgrace and memorized its fibers. i wanted to say yes. i deserved that kind of magic, but i did not have it. later, i did a research report in school about the six types of ghosts. i thought i had to persuade my gram that i was ready. :)

later in my life, my mother painted a different story of gram. she was a bi-polar alcoholic, the mean kind. sometimes violent and hurtful, and well-known by the police and fire department (apparently there were fires). she refused to attend her own daughter’s wedding and could terrify her children. those who loved her learned her patterns, the signs of doom. avoided her, abandon each other to run away. her husband bought an airplane in secret for fear of her brutal disapproval, and crashed it tragically to his death two months before i was born. my mother also lost two others that year, and feared she would miscarry from intense and uncontrollable mourning. my family attributes my “sensitivity” to the depth of emotion i suffered on my mother’s behalf in utero.

i struggle with the memory of my gram. i know that i have romanticized our time together, and that she remains more of a symbol in my life than a complete character. i feel guilty sometimes, as if i have not been honest with myself about who she was. but i suppose i remember the parts that are useful to me, and that honor her goodness and integrity. i remember that she was an amazing artist, an eccentric, stylish and ahead of her time. she was spiritual and beautiful and daring and very funny. and she loved me more than anything. and that’s my favorite part.

falling

2008-12-08T17:47:00.000-08:00

.

Sunday, April 20, 2008 1:40:54 PM

water is my favorite natural symbol and teacher. i hesitate to say so, because it is a killer as well. people i know have probably lost loved ones in lakes or oceans or floods. it happens every day. but then, i guess death is a teacher too to those living.

i have leapt from high places just to feel the wind on my face. i have a thing for speed. the adrenaline is fantastic, and the feeling of cutting air is like triumph. i regard the breaking of all barriers with esteem. the sudden change in sound alone from thrashing motion to a sharp placated landing into water invites important thinking. the world turns in an instant, and finally you are fully alert. when else does this happen?

i have heard that still water is like glass from high places. there is some formula for which moment to drop your shoe into the water to break the surface before your body hits. can you imagine? the thinnest layer of liquid binds together at some invisible molecular level. fluid, but defined. i am jealous.

i dream about falling, and water. and gravity. apparently, this is quite common. conventional interpretations associate falling dreams with insecurity, instability, anxiety. i suppose it’s obvious. losing a foothold, grasping in the air, lack of control, all of them “shortfalls”. falling dreams usually occur during the first stage of sleep, which is accompanied by muscle spasms and minor tremors in the body. when bottom hits, we jerk ourselves awake, startled and relieved. it is thought that this is part of an arousal mechanism that allows the sleeper to become instantly defensive to threats in the waking environment. i don’t think of myself as the cautious type, but i won’t rule it out.

i can’t remember the last time i dreamed of flying, but those are my favorite kind.

.

engage, reflect, transform

2008-12-03T08:42:00.000-08:00

just five days ago on the 28th of november, world renowned french anthropologist claude levi strauss turned an astounding one hundred years old. best known for his ground-breaking contributions to cultural theory and structuralist philosophy, strauss lived with and intimately studied the tribal practices and paradigms of indigenous people throughout many secluded regions of the world. from his first hand experiences and observations, strauss determined that family and community, art and ritual, and magic and mythology are just as important as science or literature in the course of human cognitive development. he further insisted that all people have similar mental structures and ways of reasoning, because all people want to structure the world to make order out of what is ultimately and reducibly chaos. having devoted his life to understanding and exposing new ways of thinking, valuing, believing and doing, levi strauss actively convinced the world that there is no such thing as a primitive or “uncivilized” people, because all people and cultures respond to a lifetime of randomness and instability in essentially the same way.

yes, life is wildly unpredictable, to say the least. in the period of the last twelve months, i have been diagnosed with epilepsy, quit my teaching job mid-semester, ended a committed relationship, bought a house, and fallen in love with an older woman, vinyasa yoga, and the spontaneous scheme of moving out of the country for as long as i can last. when i examine my recent past for indications that such significant changes were ever imminently looming, i come up with only a staggering sense of surprise, and a cautious surrender to the course of my apparently wandering life. the past is an amalgamated story, and the future is a screaming secret, and the present is just noticing, to any varying degree.

this is the stuff of final reflections. restless to assimilate meaning from the variable pieces of my life, recalling my studies in linguistically diverse education has become no casual endeavor. i review the passing semester with scrupulous and desperate care, considering what i have learned, how it has changed me, and what i may keep as i revise and expand my personal and professional identities. as i evolve.

immediately, i confess it is likely that i won’t remember what i was supposed to. i won’t remember a thousand practical teaching strategies for advancing the literacy development of young people. i won’t remember the endless list of educational researchers and theorists who are responsible for so many critical contributions to the field of literacy acquisition. i won’t remember the pure and eager world of School as it was presented through collections of neatly sequenced chapters in unproblematic texts. i simply don’t learn in this way. it is not my world.

but i will remember what awakened me. i recall carol lee fondly, who thrilled me with her insistence that students whose discourse patterns differ from the dominant, formal register of mainstream school are indeed employing intricately structured and highly complex language forms, which have great and untapped merit. i appreciate james baldwin, who suggested that heteroglossia is an invariable form of interaction in classroom settings by which significant student knowledge is exposed, and that teachers should try listening to what students are saying if we expect to penetrate their worlds with “curriculum”. brian cambourne reminded me that although i should not presume to control, command or even necessarily manage the delicate and dynamic learning process, i can establish conditions that make powerful learning possible. i reflect on kylene beers’ nostalgic and emotional letters to her former struggling student, george, and welcome her defense of literacy as a transactional, aesthetic, critical, and social process. and i especially cherish jean lave’s explanation of learning as apprenticeship, and her analysis of how teaching instruction and formal schooling may impede the human learning process in its natural, socially situated unfolding. lave taught me that it is possible –indeed vital– to reimagine School in the interest of real learning that aligns with students’ sense of Self, and extends to and transforms the cultural practices of their lives.

finally, and to a greater degree and sense of gratitude and than i can commit to any aforementioned authors or their assorted conceptions of “good” teaching and learning, i will remember the mentorship of phill(ip) white. in our first class together, phillip witnessed me defy conceptions of educational research, scientific knowledge, and schooling, and was not startled. he saw my besieged inner dialectic, and challenged me to consider whether my ideals were grounded in “a disciplined body of knowledge, or some vague sense of anti-intellectualism”. admitting that both were true, i remembered how much i had to learn, and sought phillip out with overzealous dedication. by his willingness to engage, phillip supported me to discover my own contradictions, develop my first mantra (the title of this post), and locate other educators who are thinking and writing about philosophies i am most attached to and struggle around as a teacher and learner. through our talks, i was able to locate myself in these difficult months by seeing that my questions and sense of fragmentation do not prove that i am lost along some extraneous fringe of master teaching, as i suspected, but at the essential heart. this is the kind of contemplative, relational and powerful learning that i believe matters, and the kind of teacher i aspire to be.

as lave maintained, learning is concerned with shifts in our very identities, and is socially situated in the “fundamental project of life”. against my early suspicion, i have grown this semester in ways that were not dominated by the voices of children, marked by the self-importance of grades, or bound by the feigned mantle of solid classroom walls. my learning is shaped by reflection, which may be the very kind of ritual and art that levi strauss insists, after one hundred years of sharpened noticing, keeps us grounded in living.

moving day

2008-12-03T07:56:00.000-08:00

.
it is possible that this weather is just a mean drug. gray, beaming, blotting out trees and roads and signs of changing air and time. hissing, and plain. not like light or canvas, but bleaching and concrete and flat to the eye, with no interesting qualities. unnamable, unworthy.

it is possible that my period is gripping me inside like a chemical pressure, like falling towards the center of the earth below my aching heels, like the kind of sadness that startles. my own reflection in a black swamp. lead blankets and nostalgia of the missing and shallow breath.

and it is possible that the verge of this city grinds my private frailty, where corroding warehouses look like prisons and identical municipal buildings look like prisons and factories pumping thermoglass and serum look like prisons. and lumps of splintered curb pull off the sidewalk and sink dimly to gravelly puddles.

it is possible that moving is like tearing, like the vanishing of memories and love, the vanishing of certainty and association, the vanishing of home. like disappearing, like parting with a wistful or resented or indifferent name. like asking who was i and where am i now and how could it matter? how did it matter? it is gone.

yes. it is possible that i have traveled alone all my life, and lonely, and have wished my own abstraction from anything to believe in. i got myself into this, somehow.

it's just that it is really, especially shitty outside, and i am hormonally and physically unwell, and the city is not the proper place for me, and i moved myself into three spaces today. and one of them is borrowed, and one of them is a padlocked cave, and one of them is bare to the last fine layer of dust and echoes my toes on the floor.

i may be preordained for dislocation.