This time of year, when rampant commercialism passes for religion, I feel called upon to remember the humility and courage of my friends in Africa. Being back in the states for so long, it's easy to forget the scarcity and the stirring, peaceful stillness from everyday life in Uganda. It's almost frightening how easy it is to forget.
America is an absurd place. We have the audacity to "wage" an economic crisis after spending money without having it, and the systemic policy failures to make the poorest endure the most because of it. The news is full of "downsizing Christmas" stories and the middle class will have only one prime rib roast on the table this year.
It's not impossible to gain perspective in this city, where beggars and bankers swath the streets together. Wealth and destitution have a complicated marriage in New York, and mutual bitterness is their child. The space between the rich and the poor is only a little easier to see in the urban microcosm outside than it is anywhere. But the reality it exposes is universal.
With little to wish for except the strength and guts to do good by my friends, I'm left only to listen once more to what they've taught me about gratitude. Today I write to the Scovias, Zaitunas, Annes, and on - all the people who touched my life forever, whose simple wisdoms remade a soul. You have far less than most Americans will ever comprehend, but your fortitude is unimaginable. Thank you for what you've given me, I hope not to squander it, but make good on my promises some day.
This holiday, may your tables be filled with sustenance. May your children have workbooks and pencils. May your bodies have health. May your hearts know security. May your souls be full, so full, with stillness.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Randomness and the night sky
**Sometimes modern life blows my mind, and it should blow yours, too.
I live in New York City. Despite the grand, sparkling lights (which are not visible from below) - the night skies are a disappointment. There is no darkness. No reminder of nothingness at all. No stars. Like an Allman Brother without a Melissa, we are a city without night. In fact, there are only a few areas in the U.S. where one can see the Milky Way anymore. Only in the deepest jungles and undeveloped lands, can humans look up and see the galactic swirl above us - reminding us of our tininess, insignificance, and the grandness of everything.
Some scientists remark at the lack of darkness as negatively affecting wildlife (those poor sea turtles can't find their way to the ocean). Others take my point of view - without darkness, without night, without stars, without the Milky Way - we lose a slice of humanity. We can no longer see that which we cannot grasp - we are limited by earthly trimmings. How can our souls long? How can we yearn to know what we never will? How can we be humbled by the night sky as we once were?
I live in New York City. Despite the grand, sparkling lights (which are not visible from below) - the night skies are a disappointment. There is no darkness. No reminder of nothingness at all. No stars. Like an Allman Brother without a Melissa, we are a city without night. In fact, there are only a few areas in the U.S. where one can see the Milky Way anymore. Only in the deepest jungles and undeveloped lands, can humans look up and see the galactic swirl above us - reminding us of our tininess, insignificance, and the grandness of everything.
Some scientists remark at the lack of darkness as negatively affecting wildlife (those poor sea turtles can't find their way to the ocean). Others take my point of view - without darkness, without night, without stars, without the Milky Way - we lose a slice of humanity. We can no longer see that which we cannot grasp - we are limited by earthly trimmings. How can our souls long? How can we yearn to know what we never will? How can we be humbled by the night sky as we once were?
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Sweet dreams and flying machines
I might be the only I one I know who sings acapella alone in my house as a form of spiritual renewal. When I'm completely overcome with everything combative swirling around me, the forces of a brutal world trying to set me off course, I usually just throw my head back and sing. Sorry about that, neighbors.
I sing the songs that I don't remember learning, the ones whose tunes are as much me as my own elbow, the ones I sang at the top of my lungs in red velvet on cocoa brown carpet so long ago. Those ones. I did it then too, a little four year old diva with an audience of two. Now its an audience of none. Without thinking of who is listening, or even the key, letting loose a note that cuts the dusty city air so smoothly.. Music appeals to the higher order of things, the natural world without humans' messy interpretation. The right chord can strike on a cellular level - quashing the inauthenticity of modern life and replacing it with pure, undeniable truth.
Everyone has a way to renew, shed the layers of the world outside and remember who is underneath - the child who believes, who doesn't fear falling or failing, who asks for nothing more than eskimo kisses. My voice is a little huskier now, but it still resonates a clear note of what is essential - a stir of the soul with a little fire and rain.
I sing the songs that I don't remember learning, the ones whose tunes are as much me as my own elbow, the ones I sang at the top of my lungs in red velvet on cocoa brown carpet so long ago. Those ones. I did it then too, a little four year old diva with an audience of two. Now its an audience of none. Without thinking of who is listening, or even the key, letting loose a note that cuts the dusty city air so smoothly.. Music appeals to the higher order of things, the natural world without humans' messy interpretation. The right chord can strike on a cellular level - quashing the inauthenticity of modern life and replacing it with pure, undeniable truth.
Everyone has a way to renew, shed the layers of the world outside and remember who is underneath - the child who believes, who doesn't fear falling or failing, who asks for nothing more than eskimo kisses. My voice is a little huskier now, but it still resonates a clear note of what is essential - a stir of the soul with a little fire and rain.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Light Heart, Heavy Heart (In Memoriam)
I feel like I just did a double-back flip 40 feet in the air harnessed to bungee cords.
(Because that's precisely what I did.) During a take-the-city-kids-to-the-woods field trip to Connecticut on Monday, Ms. H tied a middle school boy for the sweetest jumper on the bungee trampoline. A kid actually called me bad-ass. What a long way I've come from actually being in middle school. Middle school me would have wanted to do it but would have died with mortification at the way the unflattering harness, um, accentuates, the mid-section. Big person me did not care. I made friends with the Kiwi camp counselor named Shaq (really) who made sure I went "super-high." I was the only teacher who demanded to take part in all the activities. A glutton for fun am I!
Watching the kids hike up a rocky hill (a mountain if you ask them) was also a hilarious activity. One of my little lovelies was convinced she would DIE and as she went down the rocky cliff in white pants, she swore (first to Jesus) and then said she would "cry for a whole day, shower for two days, and maybe be proud of myself after that!"
There's nothing like bringing kids from the urban jungle to the countryside (ugh, my sneakers is dirty, Miss!) to lighten the heart and induce laughter. But my ribs are still a little sore.
***
With a heavier heart, I announce the loss of one of the only men I've known who truly lived each day as if tomorrow would never come. You will be missed, William Henry Roland. You exposed me constantly to second hand smoke, taught me what a papasan was, and induced endless laughter in every room of Orion.
Here's something I wrote about him three and a half years ago in a story I wrote for a class:
"The two of them lounge and smoke Turkish Jade’s atop a quilted twin bed, remembering their most recent dreams. Their most current late-night séances are filled with car rides, coercion, penises and old friends.
Laughter erupts when Will describes his latest dream where he was riding in a beat-up truck with several others, including a housemate they refer to as “yam,” for his apparent lack of personality. “It’s so random, I know,” Will says, jolting his head back dramatically.
Craig, also engaging his head, twiddles his hands above it, a nervous habit, snickering as he remembers the time he dreamt of being drunk and how realistic it felt. They’re the first-floor boys. Will is daunting, dark with a large build; he towers over me by almost a foot and a half. His deep voice booms and fills the smoky space. Craig, however, is smaller with strawberry blond hair and a blazer with a pin declaring his devotion to the 80s Brit-cult-rock icons, The Smiths. Will and Craig are the house’s resident smokers, homosexuals and entertainers."
Will, since you wouldn't want me to cry, every now and then I'll have an incredibly stiff drink for you... I'll raise my glass, jolt my head back, close my eyes, and try to hear your deep, soulful laugh one more time.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Dancing like everyone's watching
Watching white people try not to dance was the highlight of a very eventful few weeks.
Apparently I am only three degrees away from hip (..ster that is.) See, I know guy who knows a girl who knew a girl that works at a new venue. Anyway, my first "club" opening in NYC was a very fun experience, especially the part where I got to watch (and not so secretly) laugh at a bunch of uptight temporary liberals who don't all need glasses but all wear them, stand very still during a more than decent rock show. There they stood, distressed leather shoes planted concretely on the floor, their plaid and corduroy-clad bodies like 250 pegs, erect but impotent. Staring down their long noses (too much?) at a decent indie rock band not whiny enough for their taste. Were they stiff for fear of sloshing any $7 "Hop Obama" brew? Was it uncouth to bop a head? Was the band a bunch of phonies and I didn't know any better? They sounded pretty good to me.
Needless to say, at the expense of a real comedic scene of 250 still hipsters packed rim to eyeglass rim, I sabotaged any third rate cool status I might have and danced real head. Anyone who knows me knows this is no fib. I'm sure the one drunk girl appreciated the company.
Ahh...A (verbena) tree grows in Brooklyn.
***
The middle school is good place to be. Despite the few ingrates who greet me with comments like "do we have you all 3 years?" to which I must bite through my tongue not to say, you mean I'm stuck with YOUR underachieving, sniveling, whining, royally annoying pain in in the you know what for the next 3 years? Yeah, despite the one or two of them - school is fun again.
A much more captive audience of 7th graders await my lectures on progressive thoughts-of-the-day and plenty of reading and writing basics (thank the person that taught YOU how to outline an essay). This week we've also started to bop heads through Songs in the Key of Life I and II. My kids, like their dutiful teacher, move to good music, even if it is during silent reading time. They can't help but just dance, and that is why I love them.
And because they teach me plenty too. Most of all they have given me a fine, overdue morsel of truth - that I am actually an adult. I must be, right? If I'm the one in charge of their literacy achievement in 7th grade, which correlates so closely to their likelihood of reaching high school and college graduations, and the playlists to which they'll learn to dance like everyone's watching and fail to care -- I must be a grownup. Gulp.
Next week: Innervisions
Apparently I am only three degrees away from hip (..ster that is.) See, I know guy who knows a girl who knew a girl that works at a new venue. Anyway, my first "club" opening in NYC was a very fun experience, especially the part where I got to watch (and not so secretly) laugh at a bunch of uptight temporary liberals who don't all need glasses but all wear them, stand very still during a more than decent rock show. There they stood, distressed leather shoes planted concretely on the floor, their plaid and corduroy-clad bodies like 250 pegs, erect but impotent. Staring down their long noses (too much?) at a decent indie rock band not whiny enough for their taste. Were they stiff for fear of sloshing any $7 "Hop Obama" brew? Was it uncouth to bop a head? Was the band a bunch of phonies and I didn't know any better? They sounded pretty good to me.
Needless to say, at the expense of a real comedic scene of 250 still hipsters packed rim to eyeglass rim, I sabotaged any third rate cool status I might have and danced real head. Anyone who knows me knows this is no fib. I'm sure the one drunk girl appreciated the company.
Ahh...A (verbena) tree grows in Brooklyn.
***
The middle school is good place to be. Despite the few ingrates who greet me with comments like "do we have you all 3 years?" to which I must bite through my tongue not to say, you mean I'm stuck with YOUR underachieving, sniveling, whining, royally annoying pain in in the you know what for the next 3 years? Yeah, despite the one or two of them - school is fun again.
A much more captive audience of 7th graders await my lectures on progressive thoughts-of-the-day and plenty of reading and writing basics (thank the person that taught YOU how to outline an essay). This week we've also started to bop heads through Songs in the Key of Life I and II. My kids, like their dutiful teacher, move to good music, even if it is during silent reading time. They can't help but just dance, and that is why I love them.
And because they teach me plenty too. Most of all they have given me a fine, overdue morsel of truth - that I am actually an adult. I must be, right? If I'm the one in charge of their literacy achievement in 7th grade, which correlates so closely to their likelihood of reaching high school and college graduations, and the playlists to which they'll learn to dance like everyone's watching and fail to care -- I must be a grownup. Gulp.
Next week: Innervisions
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
This wooden beaded goat (no more)
I'm already bad at blogging with any hope of expediency.
Life is the green-gray sky, heavy with electricity. Right before the storm. School is on the horizon and I may not be a complete mess this year. I finally have that hopeful feeling and not sheer terror like a year ago this time. I don't want to get too sappy here, but I actually, really think I can do this. It took a year of doubting myself and falling all over the place (remember those little Mexican toys where you press a button and the goat's legs come out from under it?). Maybe I grew up and finally took that adult kool-aid, because all of a sudden I feel less like a fake grown up and more like a real one. And it's my job to work ridiculously hard to get my kids ahead (and bestow upon them character, self-worth, love of literature and other deliciously near impossible things to teach) because we live in a horribly unfair world. It's time for me to get the hell out of the way and start doing this. Like I said to Will, I'm sick of changing the world tomorrow...
In other related news, I am writing again. But not on a laptop in a starbucks so other people can see me writing. So close to livin' the dream..
In even less relevant news, I still can't afford a frame for that diploma and I'm half way to another one..
Obama for President.
Life is the green-gray sky, heavy with electricity. Right before the storm. School is on the horizon and I may not be a complete mess this year. I finally have that hopeful feeling and not sheer terror like a year ago this time. I don't want to get too sappy here, but I actually, really think I can do this. It took a year of doubting myself and falling all over the place (remember those little Mexican toys where you press a button and the goat's legs come out from under it?). Maybe I grew up and finally took that adult kool-aid, because all of a sudden I feel less like a fake grown up and more like a real one. And it's my job to work ridiculously hard to get my kids ahead (and bestow upon them character, self-worth, love of literature and other deliciously near impossible things to teach) because we live in a horribly unfair world. It's time for me to get the hell out of the way and start doing this. Like I said to Will, I'm sick of changing the world tomorrow...
In other related news, I am writing again. But not on a laptop in a starbucks so other people can see me writing. So close to livin' the dream..
In even less relevant news, I still can't afford a frame for that diploma and I'm half way to another one..
Obama for President.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Downtime meets Uptown
Summer from the other side is so much better. I am a 7th grade teacher in her first summer off. If you are a teacher or know any intimately, you know that the single worst degradation of our profession are those four words - flippantly (read: jealously) delivered: You have summers off!
Well let me tell you, I wouldn't have survived the year without the promise of that summer off. The job is tough, and summers off are necessary moments of rest and breath on the hike up Everest. So it's in this context, within the long, drowsy, lovely big-bear yawn and stretch part of the year, that I begin writing. So I may sound lazy.
Highlights of down time thus far:
Greenwich Village dancing till 4 with fellow teaches - I love meeting old man hippie bands!
Doing laundry (first time by myself in the city, i swear we need a "lifestyle laundry" in upper manhattan where i can get a massage or maybe a iced coffee while your clothes spin. Instead i have to swoop on a seat, risk looking like a yuppie with my choice of laundry room literature, walk around the street posturing toughness so I can ignore the homeless - giving makes you look weak, and order coffee in fake Spanish "eh, cafe por favor, eh.. no, no light and sweet). You get the idea. Will is so much better at it than I am.
Home time in Michigan playing with the kids and seeing all the family I could. And there was that stumble back to the old gay bar that has served me since I was 16. Thank god for the nice gay man of a certain age who took Carl and I under his wing and drove our drunk asses home. Yay for being the only ones on the dance floor and embarrassing, sloppy exits!
Teaching my Dad about the blasphemous irregardlessly. "I'm not an English major." (My Dad's a very bright guy, engineering type, systematic thinking). I'm not either, Dad. But irregardlessly is a diagnosis term for adult retardation.
Running the air conditioner on full blast - Al Gore be damned, you don't live on the 4th floor. And huddling in with Will in a cool apt.
Small favors equal saviors. More on the summer of love soon.
Well let me tell you, I wouldn't have survived the year without the promise of that summer off. The job is tough, and summers off are necessary moments of rest and breath on the hike up Everest. So it's in this context, within the long, drowsy, lovely big-bear yawn and stretch part of the year, that I begin writing. So I may sound lazy.
Highlights of down time thus far:
Greenwich Village dancing till 4 with fellow teaches - I love meeting old man hippie bands!
Doing laundry (first time by myself in the city, i swear we need a "lifestyle laundry" in upper manhattan where i can get a massage or maybe a iced coffee while your clothes spin. Instead i have to swoop on a seat, risk looking like a yuppie with my choice of laundry room literature, walk around the street posturing toughness so I can ignore the homeless - giving makes you look weak, and order coffee in fake Spanish "eh, cafe por favor, eh.. no, no light and sweet). You get the idea. Will is so much better at it than I am.
Home time in Michigan playing with the kids and seeing all the family I could. And there was that stumble back to the old gay bar that has served me since I was 16. Thank god for the nice gay man of a certain age who took Carl and I under his wing and drove our drunk asses home. Yay for being the only ones on the dance floor and embarrassing, sloppy exits!
Teaching my Dad about the blasphemous irregardlessly. "I'm not an English major." (My Dad's a very bright guy, engineering type, systematic thinking). I'm not either, Dad. But irregardlessly is a diagnosis term for adult retardation.
Running the air conditioner on full blast - Al Gore be damned, you don't live on the 4th floor. And huddling in with Will in a cool apt.
Small favors equal saviors. More on the summer of love soon.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Twittering the Door Back Open
After describing my bad ass dark matter banner to my sig.oth -- he smirked. Oh, a blog. What are you going to blog about? As if my life isn't riveting and relevant and worthy of sharing all it's random mutterings of "wisdom"? Okay, it's not. But that's not why I write or blog for that matter.
So in a few twitters, if you will, I'll tell you why.
Words matter: change our world.
Ephemeral moments need documentation.
Big world demands little ignorance.
Open eyes, live life on fire.
So, just like that I'm back to blogging. Sharing bits of my world with the ether.
Commotion, add poetry, shake well.
So in a few twitters, if you will, I'll tell you why.
Words matter: change our world.
Ephemeral moments need documentation.
Big world demands little ignorance.
Open eyes, live life on fire.
So, just like that I'm back to blogging. Sharing bits of my world with the ether.
Commotion, add poetry, shake well.
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