Lilacs and Possibility

Kids, I am happy. It could be the wine, but I am pretty sure it is the lilacs.

Like Melina, I don't want to be continually moping around (what good is that for me or you), so I have, after a walk in the nearby horticultural gardens, decided to focus on the good stuff. What follows is a list of things for which I am glad:

1. The powerful scent of lilacs, that can pull you out of dark places and strengthen you.

2. Light on water. Quiet reflection.

3. Spring, with its reminder of birth and death, its persistent stretch.

4. Connections. Mo and her men, Huck the lionhearted, Auggie, straight as an arrow, AJ, pure and true. Blog friends who surprisingly come to your rescue with comments that bolster.

5. Books, art, music, and how they all merge with life and change it, shuffle it, provide new perspective.

6. The potential for humans to do good. Or not.

7. The feeling that there is some "magic" and destiny and purpose in the world.

8. The labyrinth. Narrow pathways, hidden doors, almost-missed markers. What you see behind the scenes, after dark, chance meetings, stepping into something new. That bittersweet feeling when you realize that you can't go back.

Wu-wei

I believe that I committed, this afternoon, to spend ten days with Veronica in Florida this summer. I say "I believe" because I had just gotten out of work, was decompressing from a stressful day at school and my side of the conversation consisted of incoherent babbling into my cell phone while driving. Which is kinda scary, isn't it?

The school counselor has begun to tell some of the students that they won't be passing certain classes this year, and it is causing great upheaval. Hell, I made some minor seating chart changes today and hysteria ensued. Public school is a trip, kids. A real trip.

Conversation with Wendy, my friend and comrade, who teaches in the room next door:
Me: "I'm not doing well. I'm irritated. No, maybe I'm depressed."
Wendy: "About school or outside of school?"
Me: "School. I hate the students. All of them."
Wendy laughs. She proceeds to give me tips for dealing with irate parents: "I just say, 'You know, you are probably right. Their grade shouldn't be that low.' Then I add enough points to bring up the student's grade and I call the parent back and say, 'It was my mistake. I'm just not used to this new gradebook program yet." Wise Wendy.

I'm not sure how long I will be able to keep working at the salt mines. I am going over the edge. But then I was encouraged when a student from last year came back to visit me this afternoon. I know that he found some refuge in my classroom, some sense of belonging that he couldn't find anywhere else. Fuck.

So Veronica calls and wants to know when I am coming. She is ready to book tickets on a boat to the Keys and she wants me to stay for at least 10 days. Later she writes me an e-mail:

"You are SOOOO stressed out and need a break!  I want you to "Destress" when you get here.  Much time "lolling" around the pool. Drinking wine or whatever. I have a few places to treat you to dinner that I want you to have. I also want to do the Key West trip for 2 or 3  days. We'll take the boat, we'll buy some food and wine for morning and afternoon...spend our evenings out.  I am also taking you PARASAILING..a most amazing feeling!  You are going to RELAX while you are here and feel a little pampered ( I hope) You deserve a big BREAK and it's time you had it! Naples is beautiful. You love art...we have the nicest art museums in Fla. We can do that, we'll go to the pier and watch the dolphins. You can sit on the lanai and listen to the palm trees with a glass of wine.  You will relax! Best of all there will be NOOOO schedule. We'll make our plans as we go. Keeeedoke???   I love you MJ...always have.  Remember when you came to Fla. with me when we were in 9th grade?  You said it was "magical" when we ran around the beach at night.  Lets "duplicate" that feeling!    Sooooo, go online, check the airfares..plan for the 15th, 16th etc. I will make the reservations for Key West for the 18, 19 & 20th.  Okaaaaayy!  This will be fun.    Talk soon.  Love, V.

I don't know what has happened to me, but all of my "I want a new life!" exhuberance seems to have disappeared. Last summer as the school year drew to a close I had PLANS! NYC! Portland, Oregon! I was taking journeys, damn it! I was going after change!

Now I am filled with inertia. Maybe it's a necessary phase. Maybe it just takes me a long time to figure "things" out. And those "things" are very large, very life-changing, not like my little indecisions about summer trips.

So I'll force my mind to just focus on the summer. Hmmm, should I go to Florida when the house needs a new roof? And hundreds of other maintenance necessities? And I'm poor as hell?

I could spend the summer sitting at the picnic table in the yard lost in thought, in non-action, pushing thoughts deeper, preventing myself from acting in my life. Mallory has hit on something lately. Maybe I do pull away from relationships, recede out of fear of loss. Again, the strong confident exterior is lifted to reveal something quite alien and weak. Fuck. Double-fuck.

I talk myself in circles again. I am an expert at that, at least. Turn the circling thoughts off and I will be left with nothing. If I dwell in nothing I will have no regrets. Will I?

Should I go
should I stay
should I speak
should I remain silent
will I regret
will I know
will I care?

Less and less do you need to force things,
until finally you arrive at non-action.

Birthing

"I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens." - Woody Allen

The weather would be the most obvious thing to talk about today. But I don't want to talk about the weather, perhaps I am not so needy for simple, peaceable human contact this morning. I want to look at the season, the cycles, spring. I want to look at what April brings.

A couple of days ago I found some great photos on a moblog. One photo was of tight pink flower buds breaking through an unfocused green background. The artist had written a poem as accompaniment:

"words like violence
break the silence
come crashing in
into my little world
painful to me
pierce right through me
cant you understand?" -CalyxAlex's Photos

to which I (unthinkingly?) responded:

Violent birth which opens into life, we are inevitably pierced, we always grasp at that which we must let go.

I wasn't really sure what that cryptic comment had to do with the guy's poem, but it was related somehow. What the comment really did was make connections for me. (So let me take a moment to apologize for my comments, friends. Sometimes they are me talking to me. Unconscious remnants. Connections. I provoke. Any exchange is fire. )

April is such a violent month. Why did I never see that? I must ask my mother about her feelings toward April. I seem to remember sitting in my farmhouse kitchen in Maine long ago after receiving two letters "etched in black", to quote Dolly. Her mother-in-law died in April and within a week her father had died as well. There was no comfort surrounding death in our family. No joyful expectation of "rebirth" in heaven. Death was an evil thing, not talked about and superstitiously denied.

I saw the movie Birth last night, with Nicole Kidman, about a woman who desperately clings to her dead husband. Ten years after his death, just as she has seemingly "let go" of him and agreed to remarry, a 10-year-old boy who claims to be her dead husband and knows intimate details about their relationship, enters her life. The movie is heavy with images of the cycle of life and death, death and rebirth, born in water, buried in soil, rising and falling, like the waves on the ocean as the movie ends and Nicole Kidman, newly married, is drawn toward the sea. (Nicole Kidman is fantastic, by the way. And guess what? Anne Heche redeemed herself in this movie with her best acting yet.)

Women giving birth are so close to death. That violent expulsion with its proposed joyful ending leaves us battered, somehow changed. Some of us don't make it. The rest take it in stride. We know things. We deny this knowing, this rite of passage, and the medical estabishment treats us as silly containers, they usurp us, put us in wheelchairs, tell us not to follow our instincts.

Breasts have (again!) become blow-up toys for men, who judge which are the most attractive. Silicone. Saline. B, C or D? DD! Too much space between them. One is bigger than the other. As our corpses decompose, will our breasts live on? Oh! I digress. Or not.

I cling to the sweetness of April. Wearing hats made of paper plates, garish tissue flowers and ribbon tied under our chins, our child selves marched smartly around the gymnasium in a swirl of color. We were buds, and our mothers, carrying the scars of our births, watched us proudly from the bleachers. Denying the biological functions of their own bodies, they learned to feed us formula at only the appropriate times, burying the knowledge of sweet milk going unused, soaking the front of their nightgowns, memories of death and rebirth, and the mystery that birthing brings.

"Just put us out," they said. I need to not feel the pain of childbirth. Let me have the good with none of the bad.

Running toward the light, we bring the darkness quickly.

Let's Talk about the Weather

Alrighty then. I'm back. And Friday came none too soon. What a busy week, huh?

I wonder what you all are doing RIGHT NOW. Are you driving past a cornfield, headed for the gym, or are you half way home carrying visions of crazy students in your mind? Are you in a cubicle somewhere creating deep poetry, elevated brooding, lonely meanderings, beautiful kindnesses? Do you miss your boyfriend? Oh! Are you wishing you were at a bar with an ice cold draught in front of you and a hefty shot of Woodford slightly to the left of it? Yes. I can see that.

Me? I am in my little room that overlooks the side yard, and it has been raining for hours. I can see the picnic table out there, and I hear the birds. They like the rain. There is snow in the forecast. Some places nearby may get 12 inches. Strange and interesting weather. I used to hate talking about the weather, but I have learned to appreciate the gentle way it allows interaction with people with whom I may not find any other commonality. I like to talk about the weather with old men, especially farmers.

See any good movies lately? (All conversations inevitably turn to movies.) I rented Meet the Fockers, and I did laugh out loud several times. Quite a high-powered cast for a silly comedy. Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand were fun. And yes, I did laugh when the foreskin flew into the fondue.

What about that Colin Powell? He's getting bold, eh? And what about that helicopter video all over the news? Let's get fired up about those insurgents, folks, and invade somebody else. Let's kill some foreigners! Oh! And what about all of the talk about the environment? Global warming? PHHHHTT! (Imagine spit flying.) I've forgotten about the pope already. I do, however, remember the visual of black smoke coming out of a pipe. Wow.

I have no plans for the weekend. Do you? I keep thinking I will clean the backroom where the plumbing nightmare occurred (it was only half-assed cleaned afterward, not majorly disinfected), but I am still traumatized at the sight, so I may rearrange the livingroom and clean the refrigerator instead. Baby steps. Let's not overdue it. Those cleaning chemicals are toxic. Someday I will be glad I was slovenly.

Hey! I think I just thought of another affirmation!

I will do my part to save the environment and maintain my own health (thereby killing two birds with one stone) by almost never cleaning.

I think it works.

Affirmations Work!!!

Oh. My. God. I would have been the last to believe it, but much to my surprise affirmations work!

I actually did meet a millionaire today and to make a long story short, we are happily married and have two kids! Wow! So now I have been thinking that a blog change is probably in order. Of course the name will have to change since it's not just ME anymore, but my handsome husband and our darling TWINS, whom I love and adore and fawn over 24-7. They love it. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE.

If I could figure out how to get a heart symbol I would certainly include that in the title. Something like "The Daily Affirmations of MJ and her millionaire husband and darling twins" surrounded with hearts hearts hearts. And those stars that move across the page and other moving things to show that if you shoot for the stars you can DO ANYTHING!

Fucking Affirmations

I don't usually do much affirming, but Sena thought it would be good for me, so hey! I gave it a try yesterday, and my affirmation came to be! At least the first adjective.

Day 1 Affirmation:

Um, I'm gonna have a fucking good day, damn it!

(Affirmations require lots of exclamation points, I sense.)

OK! Now for today. Here's my Day 2 Affirmation:

Even though the world is totally fucked up and I hate everyone in it, I'm pretty sure I will marry a millionaire and be super happy.

I will let you know later if my Day 2 Affirmation ALSO "comes true"!

Up to Here

Imagine me, holding my hand to my forehead as if I'm shielding my eyes from the bright sun. "That's how full I am," I squint. "Up to here."

Sena, my old college friend, has joined me after her board of directors meeting. "I can't believe they let me do this," she marvels. "Me, the principal of a school with a budget in the millions of dollars? It blows me away!" We sit at a round metal table in the garden courtyard of a little restaurant, me drinking wine and trying to shake a two-day headache. Sena ponders the plants growing on a nearby terrace, and wonders if they are celery.

Digging, she wants to know if I have friends to play with on the weekends, if I have anyone to talk to, if I am taking action in my life.

I share my "up to here" woes. First of all, a student's father stared me down like an alpha-male at parent/teacher conferences last night. He angrily bored his eyes on me for several minutes. I ignored him, trying to focus on the angry wife, but I wanted to look at him and say, "Are you attracted to me or something?" His son is one of the rudest students in the school. Go figure. But conferences were better than last year, when a father practically jumped over the table at me because his son's failing grade was my fault. The salt mines are emotionally exhausting. It feels like I have no time to think.

Another thing. I finally spoke with a lawyer about bankruptcy and student loans. He said there's not a chance that I can have them discharged. Apparently a case just went down where an attorney-turned-pastor tried to discharge his student loans through bankruptcy (his income was less than $20,000 a year) and the judge ruled that his student loans were non-dischargeable. So my student loans need to find a dark corner in my head where they are not continually demanding my attention. I can't pay them. Hell, I can barely get from one paycheck to the next. And all my great dreams for paying them back now seem like halfwitted schemes.

"I don't feel like I have matured at all since college," I say, and Sena happily agrees. "Neither do I." She takes control, just like she used to do when we were all beginning to take off on our tabs of acid and make stupid communal plans like, "Let's walk across the wild hills where the horses roam until we reach the trees on the horizon!" An adventure! It was raining that day and she cut holes in plastic bags and slid them over each of our heads. Hours later when we came back a frantic, muddy mess, drenched and freaking out because some cowboys chased us on horseback with guns because they thought we had cut a hole in their fence, she greeted us with cookies and warm blankets. She never drank, never drugged, and never judged.

"What do you want," Sena asks. She gives me a good long hug. "OK. You will write an affirmation every day and send it to me. Our lives will not be carried along on unthinking days and unthinking nights. We will decide. We will have purpose. We will be spontaneous, have fun!. We will direct our lives toward happiness. We will have hope. We will enjoy other people. We will care."

Good girl that I am, I have already begun my assignment.

I won't think of decisions I have made as "bad decisions". I will see them as opportunities to learn and grow. I will not let my self-concept be controlled by other people. I will consider myself worthy of having goodness come my way. I will not be afraid of wealth. I will be open-hearted.

How am I doing? Whew. Affirmations are a bitch. Sorta like chain-posts.

But I will step out into this sunny day and be glad for what comes my way.

Needy Selfless

I tell Mallory I have no discipline, that I spent &$%#@&! (obscene amount) on grad school just to impose some discipline on myself. She doesn't buy it, but that is her job. She builds me up (again). "You get up every day and go to work and you have been the sole support for your family for more than fifteen years. Isn't that discipline?" "You come to see me every week even when you think it is ineffective. Isn't that discipline?" "You got a *%$#!+&!! (motherfuckingworthless) degree. Isn't that discipline?" "Maybe you don't give yourself enough credit."

Mallory. I say. You stupid slut. (Oh, wrong script.) Mallory. Everything I do is doomed. If I try and achieve mindfulness I will eventually realize that life is meaningless. If I publish a book, I will be feeding wrong motives. If I love, I will not be selfless enough. All roads lead to my failure. All people will leave me. This is my specialty.

Fast forward to a re-run of Seinfeld last night. Elaine is chumming with the doubles of Jerry, George and Cramer. She is attuned to the shortcomings of her old friends, and chooses the newer versions, who envelope her with affection. I am fixated on the TV.

That feels good.

The Salt Mines

The salt mines control not only my waking thoughts, but my body. It is impossible to leave my classroom during working hours and my body conforms to a strict schedule.

Bells ring, clocks tick, papers shuffle, shhhh. Signs of emotion quickly rushed into the appropriate office, where they are documented and reported to the proper authority. A teacher breaks down, the door slams, a student disagrees, the library is off-limits, no skateboards allowed. The intercom breaks into the airspace with a thought for the day and I sit behind a stack of papers, give this kid a pat on the back that kid is bullied she has low self esteem his t-shirt is inappropriate she is moving again.

You can do it. You are good readers. Good job.

A note, folded tight and topped with a pink heart is kicked down the hallway during passing time along with candy wrappers and pencils. Once Megan loved Josh. The principal slowly combs the hallway, leaning over and picking up each one.

15 Minute Diva

I.
Work is exhausting. I have been back at the salt mines for a week and there has been no energy for blogging.

Teachers are totally and outrageously overworked. If anyone ever gives you any bullshit about how "...teachers don't really work... it's a gravy job... the lazy bastards get summers off... they are the reason the nations' children are flunking the standardized tests...they aren't smart enough to do anything else...blah, blah, blah, blah...", hit them up-side the head for me, will ya? That is fucking bullshit. But I'm too tired for a tirade today. It's Friday. And for the first time this week I'm feeling somewhat mellow.

II.
By the way, have you seen Being Julia? I loved Annette Bening, who plays a 1930's English stage actress. She is having a mid-life crisis, is unsatisfied with her life and looking for an awakening...which comes in the form of an affair with a MUCH-younger man. She really puts herself out there for love, like a girl, vulnerable and open, only to be humiliated when her young lover moves on to a girl his age. But in the end she "triumphs", using the craft with which she had grown so bored in the first place...acting.

III.
How do we "act" ourselves into holes(roles) where we don't feel alive? Do we faithfully play our parts (as bad actresses) until suddenly we realize we aren't happy? And when we finally become conscious of our predicament do we find ourselves older but no wiser? Are we ashamed to be revealed as amateurs? We search for the standard with which to judge our life, but all of the grown-ups are in meetings with financial advisors who hold a finger to their lips, ending the conversation to declare victory.

Ha! No adventure is silly, even the humiliating ones. When we discover we aren't the wise grown-up that we once pretended, all is not lost. We are still on a journey, but a fool's journey. Gracefully I move toward my mark, seeking girlish adventures. I (of course!) stumble and the audience, leaning forward in their seats, catches their breath as one. They earnestly act out the role that was written especially for them by me.

Book meme! Passed on ...

Passed to me from Cookie...

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Since we ARE all stuck inside Fahrenheit 451.... "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy." (Fire Captain Beatty)...I would "be" a seemingly innocuous childrens' book, like Dr. Seuss' The Sneetches or Horton Hears a Who.



"Many readers didn’t know that The Sneetches was inspired by Seuss’s opposition to anti-Semitism, that Horton Hears a Who! was a political statement about democracy and isolationism, or that The Lorax and The Butter Battle Book were parables about the environment and the arms race. Dr. Seuss’s true genius may lie in the fact that all of this was done with such humor and finesse, that few realized he was being political at all. " (The Political Dr. Seuss)

So yea, I'd hang with the kids. The grownups are useless.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Of course! The Prince in Cinderella. Isn't that the fucking problem here? Actually, I always like the hopelessly fucked-up characters. I would want to hang out with Grady Tripp and Terry Crabtree in Wonder Boys. But the authors are the ones who are really attractive. How did Mark Helprin's brain come up with Winter's Tale? Amazing. And even though Barbara Kingsolver is controversial in the Indian community, her character Loyd Peregrina in Animal Dreams is the perfect lover. So I have come full-circle, back to Cinderella. See? We are ruined.

The last book you bought is:

In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction (Judith Kitchen & Mary Paumier Jones, Eds), at Goodwill for 50 cents.

The last book you read:

The Stupidest Angel, by Christopher Moore, a Christmas present from Huck. This author has been dissed a lot, but he's got a funny groove and there's room for him at the table. Let's not get uppity, here.

A few years ago there was an art installation at a local university. The student artist had completely covered the floor of a room with books and invited the public to enter and walk around. People couldn't deal with it. They stood timidly outside and peeked in, but most couldn't bring themselves to walk on those sacred books.

What are you currently reading?

Chronicles of Tao, by Deng Ming-Dao. A little bit each night before I go to sleep.

Five books you would take to a deserted island
This one is really hard. I know I would get tired of whatever I brought. I would be glazed-eyed and eating sand at the end of day-one. Or aren't we shipwrecked? Is this a little vacation? (Then I would need travel books...) Or was I kidnapped and held for ransom?! Hmmm.... Ok. I'm shipwrecked.

1. Survival Book ("how to" -knots, boats, dwellings, hunting, you know, all the essentials)
2. Sketch book/journal
3. The Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu (although, knowing me, I will probably not read it. I have gone crazy and am killing wild pigs with a home-made spear I learned to make from #1)
4. The Bible (see #3 - gone totally "native")
5. Comprehensive encyclopedia (for reading at the latrine, which I learned to make from #1)

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

1. Ryan, a tormented book-lover.
2. Gene, a deep book-lover.
3. Melina, a feisty book-lover.

They all have interesting things to say.

Queen Shit

The drain cleaner guy came back yesterday and snaked out the pipes again. This time he put a balloon thingy in the air pipe on the roof and shot a kabillion pounds of pressure through the system, which caused a great brown geyser in the bathroom, where nothing had been going down the toilet, bathtub or sink for some time. So I was mopping up shit again yesterday, which I have decided is good for the soul.

I'm sure it has made me a better person. Maybe enlightened, even.

So here is my divinely shitty poem, a remembrance of Spring Break 2005:

The Shit

Feces and piss and blood and rotting flesh and death and Terri Shiavo,
The American psyche, the pope the war and death comes in threes, says Dolly.
Easter and jonquils bare branches and mud
shit on the doorknobs, a cardinal!
Shit on shoes
Shit on floors
Shit on the roof
Hallelujia!

I will try and channel more later.

The Shit Chronicles

To Do:

1. Mess around with blog for hours
2. Visit Dolly
3. Take photos
4. See you later
"Look at his hair." I sit on Dolly's couch, both of us facing the TV, the commercial booming and Dolly knitting her ten billionth dish rag, this time in a new color - maroon. "What do you think of this color," she asks me again. Would I like some cottage cheese? "No thanks! Sounds good, though." A stray coke can gets quickly swept off to her back room. "Look at how tight that man ties his tie." I look up and see Brian Williams on the screen. The phone rings and Collette, my sister, asks Dolly's opinion about a skirt on the home shopping network. "Which color should I buy?"

"Do you want to come with me to the Goodwill store," I ask.
"Oh no."
"Why?"
"I don't like going in those places."
"Why not?"
"I don't know.
"Analyze it. Why don't you like going there?"
"I don't like putting them on."
"You don't want to wear the clothes? Because they are dirty?"
"No. I don't like putting them on me." Dolly scowls and moves her hands around her torso.

At the Goodwill store I wander slowly around, realizing I feel more comfortable here than at Dolly's house. A stunning young woman with multiple piercings is at the checkout. She tells the cashier that she drove forty miles to shop here because "this is a good store". The woman next to her went to the doctor today. She is worried, and the woman with the piercings looks at her earnestly. "I'll call you as soon as I get home."

Back at Dolly's, I lay out my "finds". Several little shirts that AJ can use for dance. A cute green stretchy top with little slits at each side for Mo. I'll send them tomorrow with the "already viewed" copy of Shawn of the Dead I bought for them.

Dolly has fallen asleep in her chair with her knitting in her hands. I look over at her mantel, with its row of bright glossy Easter cards. Dolly loves greeting cards.

Driving forty miles home in the dark there is talk of Terri Shiavo on the radio, and I eat it up, like good conversation. People talking about death is somehow reassuring.

Today maybe I'll get those student papers out of my car trunk, try to get some grading done. Maybe I'll rake the front yard. Take a walk, take some pictures. I can feel the inner shift happening, from possibility to restraint. This is day eight of my ten-day spring break. Hmmm. "Shit" seems to be the theme of this little respite. I have been up to my neck in it, looking at it, smelling it, shoveling it, thinking about it.

I'll have to talk to Mallory about this one.