God, My Therapist, and Me

Think, really,
what you do,
what you say.

Can you?
do this thing called life
undo the patterns
watch the wait.

I’m reading the equation
for a pattern, for a theme.

Years ago
This was a bell jar
The lights
A brilliant blue.

Now
These crystal walls
Fill precariously
To the brim

The mornings continue
The evenings do too
But can I?

loving labels

I'm a teacher.

It is reassuring in these unbelievably uncertain times to know what it is that I do. If nothing else.

To love the label, even if this teacher label could fall off at anytime - or be torn off - OR I may not be given a new label to write teacher on after its off. Or to be the teacher but be labeled a long term substitute instead. You get the idea. What do I tell people when asked? What do I prefer? Teacher.

On Generation Meh, Henderson, sums it up - career labels, like other labels (gender, sexual, political, cultural), could never begin to define a person. But having for once, an easy career label, is a relief. I very much feel her when she says, "You might also be a million other things, but it’s a starting point, a place to hang your hat."

With the new year, starting off not only on a blue moon but a blue note, as it has for me and some of my close friends, I really enjoyed the first day of school and seeing my students. I enjoyed returning to a familiar place and to being around them. In my eyes, they represent pure potential. They inspire me to live life fully and force me, despite it all, to be present.

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?

Night Owl

Dream by day, evade by night. It's a defense mechanism that works - flip the natural sleep cycle upside down when you don't want to deal with reality. At least, not when everybody else is awake.

This was a summer of nights. Nights spent applying for the few stable teaching positions coveted by every other teacher in Los Angeles and trying to figure life out. Nights spent mindlessly avoiding those two goals with books, journals, old dvd collections. I did most of that work between the hours of midnight and 5am.

This is my last week of being a night owl! Even though I slept at around 3am and should still be curled up in bed, I'm wide awake and blogging? I feel jet lagged. My eyes feel agitated. The to-do list is already starting to form in my head.

Four women I know became mothers this summer. How awesome and wonderful is that? They must be night owls too with a to-do list that will last forever. I'm going to brew myself some coffee and make breakfast.

Revision

This part of my life feels like what Anne Lamott would call, the up draft. I'm looking back at the life I've written, sentence by sentence, word by word. Wanting to fix it up.

I can easily spot the really poetic, beautiful passages - definite keepers. But then, inevitably, pages and pages of mistakes. Really painful, awful, obvious, ugly mistakes.

And then I realize, it's impossible. I can't revise my life like I would a written narrative. All I can do is read it for what it was, learn from it and move on to the next piece.

Try to write the best next chapter that I can.