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.

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.

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