Around Then

I'm back in my classroom, sorting through last year's work and planning for this year.  One of the notebooks had the following writing I'd done with my students in Poetry & Fiction:

Around 2008 three Frenchmen tell me to get out of the country.  I need a dictionary to figure out what they said.

Around 2003 I use a silver, putty knife to scrape fossilized gum off the bottom of every desk, chair, and table in a high school.

Around 1988 Colin tries to bite me.  I scramble up a mattress that leans against the wall.

Around 1997 Vince throws a basketball at my face.  I don't know how to respond.  He punches me in the nose, twice.

Around 2008 the top of the toilet tank is off at a Halloween party.  I pull on the tube instead of the floater to flush, and water hits the ceiling.

Around 1998 I tried to cut in half a 3" block of American cheese, just as my friend reached up while stocking the prep station's fridge.  Blood sprayed on the fryolator and grill.

Prompt Fiction

I've nearly finished a fiction writing course at UNH, and it has reminded me to give time and care to my own writing - something I haven't done since I started work as a full-time teacher last August. Here's my response to one of the brief prompts from last week:

I can't see the moon. I want it, reflected off the still water, broken into ripples that roll from a swan - its body embraced by the water. I want that Rilke poem to play out here. But I have only mud on my boots, and the water only laps at them. No embrace. And the stillness stinks of rotten, raw earth. No grace here. Just depths that I can't see, but know: some slime haunts the bottom of the water; it will stay there until the lake dries. Even then, it will harden like a scab, covering the bed that once held such a poetic promise of beauty.


The prompt had two options, and I chose the first:
1) Describe a lake as seen by a murderer, directly after the murder, but don't mention the murder.
2) Describe a place as seen above by a bird, but don't mention the bird.

The punctuation near the end and the Rilke reference need work, among other things, but it was fun to focus on my own creative work instead of my students' writing. Now I need to get back to completing my short story.

Sons of Lapetus

Part one of the Atlas Shrugged film trilogy came out recently.  Critically, it failed.  But I bet it got some Tea Party people fired up.

When Alix and I first started dating, she suggested I read The Fountainhead and told me that I reminded her of Howard Roark, the protagonist.  It was flattering.  But for many years after that I would point out the comparison whenever someone mentioned the book, and sometimes even when they didn't.  I'm glad I stopped doing that.

Jean Jacket

I broke my collarbone when I was in kindergarten.  It's not super clear, but you can see the difference between the right and left bones in the x-ray I got as part of my health exam to work in France.  Apparently x-rays are the most efficient way for them to check for tuberculosis.

I was taking off my new jean jacket to put in my cubby.  My dad had dropped me off at kindergarten that day, and was talking with the teacher on the other side of the room.  I used the kid method of taking off a jacket - grab the collar and pull as you twist your body in weird ways until the jacket comes off - and I ended up with the jacket inside-out, off of me except at the hands where the cuffs were too tight to slip.  It looked like a jean jacket jump rope attached to my hands.  

My dad says he realized, at this point, what I was thinking and shook his head "no" to stop me.  But I had already started to use the jacket as a jump rope.  It was too short.  It caught my legs and pulled them from under me.  And, since my hands were stuck in the cuffs, it also yanked my hands back.  My shoulder took all the force on the linoleum floor.  I haven't had another jean jacket since then. 

Off the Wall

Pretty soon I'll be a teacher again.  Only a long-term substitute, though, so I'm yet to have my own classroom.  When I do, I'll need to get some morale and moral boosting posters for the walls.

Three posters stick in my mind from when I was a student.  The first encouraged students in Ms. R's math class to stick through algebraic frustrations.

Next, I had a somewhat buddhist lesson in mindfulness.

Finally, my social studies teacher had a small quote above the chalkboard.

It seemed ironic given the emphasis on rote memorization of facts in the class, and the possibility that the quote didn't originate with Eleanor Roosevelt.  But it stuck with me nonetheless.

SK8

This video's five years old now, but I thought of it as I washed the dishes the other day and Sigh Your Children came on my ipod.  I'm still impressed by the level of rollerblading my French friends had/have.  I'm also still embarrassed by how poorly I represent skateboarding, as most of my stuff is me falling and then smiling at the camera.  Good memories.

Z-Man

I spend about 1/3 of my life asleep.  If I make it to my normal life expectancy, then the amount of time I've lived so far - all 26 years of it - will go to sleep.  Fortunately, I like to sleep.  And so does my body.  I recently defeated a flu that overtook me when my defenses were down from lack of rest (I played dodgeball until 2AM, then woke up early), and the recovery took hours and hours of extra sleep.  Too much sleep.  I decided in the haze of influenza that if I could have one superpower, it'd be to not need sleep.

On the day I felt the sickness take over, I got to see Donald Glover perform at William & Mary.  It was worth the fever.  Too bad this is the best video I could find:

Nine Years of Love, Today

Jimmy Gatz

Here's a list that Gatsby made as a boy, and which his father shows Nick, our narrator, in the final chapter of The Great Gatsby:

Rise from bed ................................................. 6.00           A.M.
Dumbbell exercise and wall-scaling ................... 6.15--6.30    "
Study electricity, etc. ....................................... 7.15--8.15    "
Work .............................................................. 8.30--4.30  P.M.
Baseball and sports ......................................... 4.30--5.00    "
Practice elocution, poise and how to attain it ...... 5.00--6.00    "
Study needed inventions .................................. 7.00--9.00    "

                          GENERAL RESOLVES

No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable]
No more smokeing or chewing.
Bath every other day
Read one improving book or magazine per week
Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week
Be better to parents


It reminded me of a list I made, less impressive or ambitious, when I was also a boy:

- Land kickflip over two boards
- Write three new songs for Conformity Crisis
- Talk more with [current crush]
- Unlock levels in Cool Boarders 2

I remember that I wrote this list in freshman English class, although I didn't end up reading The Great Gatsby while in high school.  In fact, I first read it as I prepared to take the PRAXIS exam for my English teacher certification.  I don't know why but I didn't get much from that first read.  This time around, though, I found compelling characters and a rich plot.  And now, years after the first go, I understand why it's included in the canon of great American novels.

Only the Strong

Just like guns, capoeira can be a force for good or evil.  Unlike guns, however, gang violence dealt in capoeira doesn't kill innocent bystanders.  No drive-by cabecadas.  If anything, it makes the onlookers cheer and applaud.  Too bad all gangs can't settle things in a capoeira jogo.