Education (Complete First Draft)

The children sat on the thin rug, its neatly gridded town map covered by their squirming circle. “And so Juan decided to try finding the wind.” Ms. Daniel, with the memory of her third grade teacher doing the same, slowly swept the illustration in front of her students. She kept the open book facing them as she read the next page. With a tilt of the head, her eyes could flicker between the words and their audience.

“Who thinks they know what happens next?” Geoff let go of the marker basket on the shelf, swiveled on his knees, and grasped Katie’s shoulder as he leaned forward to get his free hand as close to Ms. Daniel’s face as allowed. Katie gave in to his weight. His volunteer hand waved closer. “Geoff, please stay seated.”

The children waited on the thin rug, its toy town print the same as their classroom’s. “And so Ms. Daniel’s class will be our guests until lunchtime.” Ms. King’s class, having done this before, welcomed their guests in unison. They pretended not to hear the noise in the next room over. With nervous flicks of the eyes, the children waited for the teacher’s reassurance.

“It’s because of me.” Katie looked down at the carpet, confessing to a best friend, thinking that if she had held Geoff up none of this would be happening. Geoff pounded on the other side of the wall. She squeezed the tears in. “Katie, it’s okay.”

The teachers sat at the classroom table, its height forcing them to turn their knees to one side. “And so I don’t see why a boy like Geoff should be in this school.” Ms. Daniel, with her head lowered while Ms. Penn talked, nervously shifted a tomato in her salad. She kept her eyes down as Ms. Mole told all she’d heard about Geoff’s family. Without looking up, she could imagine the looks on the other teachers’ faces.

“Who knows what goes on in that boy’s head.” Ms. Daniel stood up from the table, avoiding eye contact with the teacher who’d just spoken, and walked to the almost familiar reading area. Another teacher coughed. She approached the window. “Well, I hope the rest of them are alright.”

The children flowed and clustered in the playground, its openness daunting and liberating. “And so please have Geoff be okay.” Katie, standing on the tree’s rolling roots, watched its fallen leaves sweep off the ground and spiral into the air by the enclosed corner where the school walls met. She imagined God’s finger stirring the leaves to their twirl. Without looking down, she walked off the roots towards the rising swirl.

“It’s not your turn!” Katie passed her classmates on the swingset, traced her fingers in the gaps between the wall’s bricks, and sharply inhaled as she neared the turning leaves. The wind cut and the cyclone fell. She noticed a discarded wrapper. “Mr. Joseph, he’s not waiting his turn.”

The teachers went into the room, its construction paper projects ripped from the walls and tiny chairs upturned. “And so I appreciate it but you don’t have to help.” Ms. Daniel, her lips pursing as she swept her eyes along the room, tried to remember the order that she’d created in the class. She rearranged desks while making her way to the reading rug. With the market basket in hand, she noticed a scribbling on the wall.

“God, that boy sure made a mess.” The teachers stood by Ms. Daniel, eyeing the room and each other, and shook their heads as they squinted to make out the scribbled writing. They decided it was nonsense and started to turn to the scattered books and markers. Ms. Daniel cleared her throat. “I want my momma.”

Sexy Curses: Part 3

True Blood’s lead vampire, Bill, grudgingly works to accept his vampire existence. His main source of suffering, one that often comes up in modern stories of vampires, is the complete solitude he faces. Seeing his family and friends age and die while he remains undead. And this solitude exists for the original vampire as well – having to live eternally, not only without the love of one’s family but as a source of terror for them. Yet the cultural view of solitude, the tortured individual, has changed.

As the great Greek philosophers found in Dante’s first circle of hell, Limbo, explain, their sole punishment in Hell is separation from God. To some modern readers, Limbo doesn’t sound like hell. But Dante’s culture valued God’s presence as the singular reason for existence. A vampire must live eternally not only without God’s presence, but without one of God’s greatest gifts: free will. The punishment fits the crime: by misusing God’s gift of free will in life – choosing to sin – the vampire is without it in eternal undeath. That is why feeds on its family and friends, in complete solitude, separated from God…