Nobel Laureates in Literature

So did I accomplish my tasks for Veteran's Day? Oh, did I.

One part sleeping in. One part washing car. One part grading. One part deciding the novel/rest of my life.

What to do with the rest of my life. Well, I'm reflective and thirty enough to know that there is no such thing as the rest of my life. There is only NOW. The isness of the now. I feel you rolling your eyes. I too begin to bubble sardonically (Mr Lam?) with laughter when I say, there is only NOW. But you know what? It's true.

There's also another truth, my truth.

While I slept in, as I watched Stephanie (my car) being washed, while I graded papers, while I tried to decide the rest of my life (yes. knowingly wasting the isness of the now, thinking about the unknowable future) - I thought about my novel. The story about a young woman named Audrey. I thought about her, her story, her life and what would become of her, all day.

So about this other truth, the truth in addition to this idea that there is only now. Now is a sound or a voice that continues beneath all the other sounds. Now is what continues to call your name even when its clearly time to sleep.

Teaching has been my now for a long time. If I count Japan, I'm going on my sixth year as an educator. I know its time to move forward and create social change (yes. social change. vague as it is and vague as it sounds) beyond the classroom. And its time to listen to what keeps me up at night.

There are people who think about Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. There are people who read obsessively about Nobel Laureates in Chemistry. And then there are people who dream about Nobel Laureates in Literature. I am that person. Aside from my yet to be finished novel, I re-read excerpts of Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain throughout my busy Veteran's Day.  There is so much soul in that novel and in his life. He inspires me to write and continue this exploration of and defining of the self.

And so, writing is my now. Writing has been and will be the one sound that holds all the other beautiful sounds together for me. How about that?