the valley of [in]decision

everything has come to a head all at once. some things are ending. others are shifting. everything is a question mark. my current lease will be up in a month, i'm at a career cross-roads, and i'm beginning to feel the weight of a gnawing unrest with my lack of exercise and slipshod diet.

i have no sense of agency. it's all rather depressing.

most interestingly perhaps, i've put two very specific romantic feelers out into the cosmos and the answer has been resounding silence. it's not the time for this now. i know that. not perfectly, perhaps, but as much as possible i put myself out there without an agenda and without any investment in a specific outcome. my energy is too dispersed.

and so what of Christmas? it seems to have come too soon again this year.

So Much to Say

it's hard to know how to talk about the last several months. a few days after my last entry in May found my sisters and I upside down on the Jones Falls Expressway, having been hit by a motorist driving on a suspended license (cause: DUI).

we all got out. but we were not fine. i was not fine.

a month or so before the accident my birth father and i began talking to each other by phone. i was sussing him out, enjoying the exchanges, but keeping him at a reasonable distance. i know and do not know this man. i knew him instantly, and to an extent i feared his lack of knowledge of himself. so much more dangerous because his lack of awarenss masquerades as deep knowledge.

it is the one time in my life i have been completely aware of another person's motivations and fully committed to my own lack of desire for any specific outcome.

now, he is unreachable having fled his most recent wife for the blank whiteness of alaska. before this, though, he faithfully called me several times a week. ardent as a lover, more ardent still because while i welcomed his calls, i did not care if he called. eventually he asked for a loan. something black crept to the edge of my thinking.

June and July. a constant state of fear and mistrust. at no time did i not suspect my life of ending. i was frail and fragile and every interaction was tenuous. for several days i considered strongly that i did die. my days were a disparate essay.

to make matters worse, i hated the house my middle sister and i moved in to. the dog, too, could not seem to adjust. for a while eating required coaxing, great theatrics.

i started sleeping upstairs in the living room--the one room with an a/c unit--like a long-term visitor.

and then, well... things got even more unsettling.

The Particular Sadness of Everything

My birth father has been occupying a peripheral role in my life for the last 2 and half months. As with all long lost people, I've held him out at a distance, admiringly, but not really convinced of his ability to achieve permanence. I have negotiated my life without him up to this point, and we both agree that his not being in my life was better for me. In the least defensive way possible, I don't require much. I have always believed that this is the most advantageous position in a relationship, that if a relationship is going to take, neither person can come to it with needs that overburden the fledgling phase. at the outset I decided that if he ever stopped calling. . .

Chimneys & Tulips

My summer Independent Study has begun! In the context of that IDS, I am exploring five texts: The End of the Alphabet (Claudia Rankine), I Love You Is Back (Derrick C Brown), Otherwise (Jane Kenyon), Teahouse of the Almighty (Patricia Smith), and Chimneys & Tulips (e.e. cummings).

getting used to life on a tree lined street

i've been a bolton hill resident for about two weeks. here's the thing. it's not mt. vernon. do i have a significantly better living space? absolutely. but i can't get anywhere nearly as easily. if life were perfect, this house would exist in the cultural district of my fair city. also, what is up with my achilles tendon? makes life as a pedestrian tres mal.

here's the good news. grades are in: not mine as a student, but mine as a teacher.

i'm starving. no groceries, so i'll have to order something. that's another matter. who delivers to this suburb in the city??!!

also, something wonderful and delicious is occurring to me in waves. ah... ah.... ah...

Life in Boxes: Grading still to do

I've finally done it. I've had the busy grad school semester so many of my friends have bemoaned. During my first grad program, I faithfully took two courses a semester for two years. Even though I worked full time then, too, the workload never got to me; I finished without breaking a sweat. The degree was no cakewalk, but I was only truly time-stretched during the thesis completion semester, but that, too, was manageable.

As I did last semester, I took three classes this term. I continued to work 40 hours a week. And I taught one section of composition that met twice a week. That was the tipping point. Teaching is arguably the most fulfilling thing I've ever done, but in the context of my life as a student and office wonk, I felt filleted. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I have almost no short-term memory. At least I've gotten past my 10-day, lowgrade stomach ache. No nausea or suppression of appetite. Just an ambient pain.

It doesn't help that I'm moving--that by this time next week--I will have already moved. The packing is fairly far along. It's something of a miracle that I can say that; two weeks ago I wasn't quite sure I could see my way to assembling and filling a single box.

You have to understand. Usually when I move, there's a spreadsheet called the Moving Schematic that details by week and date when certain milestone activities should occur (e.g., call magazine subscription services to have address formally changed).

It's been a bit willy nilly this time around, but somehow I'm crossing items off the list of To Dos that exists only in my mind.

How wonderful would it be if by this time next week, I had also fully wrapped up all my grading and my own homework? Not to be. Grades aren't due until the 21st, and one of my own homework assignments isn't due until May 17th. That means I'll be taking grading and writing into my first two weeks at the new place. No clean slates till later in the month.

But. . . but. . . my students. I am always going to remember these 19. I am always going to remember how much they grew as writers, how brilliant they all were, how hard they tried, and how much they made me laugh. What I wished most of all is that I had had more time to give them.

Halfway marks, tearing up at work, and the comma

Spring break is two weeks away. Because I have a 40-hour per week gig in addition to being a student myself, and teaching one section of freshman comp., this doesn't really equate to any sort of vacation for me. It is an indication, though, that we are at the half-way point. I have to turn in mid-semester grades, so I guess I'll need to figure out the drop-dead date for that.

In other news, I've teared up twice at work this week due to some stuff that I blew way out of proportion. Going into it here would be cumbersome and impolitic. I've come back to a rational place and an appropriate perspective, which has made my boss happy.

In other, other news: Today is my half birthday. A coworker gave me a huge bag of Utz Crab Chips to celebrate.

Finally, for now, I've been schooling my writing students on the wonders of the comma. Somehow, they were not as amazed and intrigued as I thought they would be.

On blizzards, stress headaches, and homemade Americanos

This winter, it seems, has some old scores to settle. If we count the mid-December event, we have had 3 blizzards in accord with the technical definition of the term (wind gusts up to 35 mph).

For all of last week, I and the entire mid-Atlantic were marooned. Snowbound. This gift of schedule disruption and stays of execution was undermined considerably by a days' long muscle spasm headache, the onset of which I can trace directly to being on a customer service call with Sprint on the Friday things really started. By Wednesday night, I was still popping 4-5 ibuprofen tablets every few hours.

But I still managed to find the relief and thrill in things as simple as sleeping in.

Before a single flake fell, my sister and I went to get my mom so she could be snowed in with us. I thought that by day 2 or 3, it might be somewhat annoying for all of us. Instead, I have reconnected with the part of me that knows what it's like to be taken care of and wants that more than anything.

As I worked from home, graded students' papers, and generally bemoaned my spasmy headache; she made me lunch, snacks, and rubbed my back. I did not realize how much I had missed her company.

In the evenings when all the three of us and the dog could do was part the slats of the balcony blinds and look out in wonder at our blanketed smothering, I sipped homemade vanilla lattes, cappuccinos, and Americanos and thought, prosaically, about the abundance of everything.

I usually wish deeply for a boy in these situations. What a waste not to be snowed in with the benefit of sexual tension to keep things interesting and cozy. Lately, though, like the grass and seedlings such wants are dormant in me.

So, my girls and I--Mom, C, and our doggie--dug in deep. We watched sitcoms in syndication, wondered when we'd ever get out, and simultaneously hoped that the weather's grip on us would not loosen. Not yet.

hitting my stride

i felt as in my element in my classroom today as i've ever felt anywhere. saw my "almost student" in the hallway after I dismissed my kids, and he said "I wanted to be in your class, but it wasn't to be..." that was sweet.

My First Disappointment

On Tuesday, my freshman composition class met for the first time. The standard syllabus review fare and introductions were all I had on the table, but a few of my students' personalities came through clearly, and I found that I had a strong sense of those kids almost right away.

One of these is a young man who carries in his being earnest mindfulness and acute intelligence. He showed up, as did a few others, at least 20 minutes early, which I appreciated and made a mental note of.

In taking attendance, I discovered that his name wasn't on my roster. And for as much as I hoped it was a mistake due to late registration, I had a sinking feeling that this kid was too advanced for my syllabus.

He asked a question about collective essay events, first of all. My first tip, aside from that mysterious factor x that told me he was set apart. Aside from that, he was in the front row, giving the best, most appropriate indications of paying attention (eye contact, other, nonverbal acknowledgments, small smiles at my lame jokes, etc.). Basically, he was a port in the storm, the person I knew was tracking with everything I said.

Today, after I did some asking and digging, it became clear that he is actually registered for the class that meets after mine in the same room. The Honors Composition class.

I was so disappointed, but also very happy for him that he'll be more challenged and that he won't be understimulated by some of the material that I need to cover, according to pedagogy, for my class section.

bummer, though.

not off to a great start, it seems

turned in my syllabus to department head for review and was told it's fine, but that a few things need tweaking. yet, one of his few comments was about the pacing and scaffolding of lessons. to my mind, this means the whole syllabus needs to change. apparently, kids don't write till they're a month in. granted, i don't remember my freshman writing class, but I would almost swear that we had a paper due at the second week.

i'm not quite sure what to do.

online dating again?

should i bite the bullet and try the dreaded eHarmony?

full interrogating the place i'm in

i've had a few opportunities to see into my own self in the last few months. i've rarely liked what i've seen. the old impulse toward irrational anger, the tendency to control, to not see possibilities, and to stay stuck also remain. i do not think of 2009 as having been a categorically bad year, though it is destined to be thought of as the collection of months when i mostly regressed.

the good things, though, are these:

i wrote about 10 new poems that have somewhere to go
i read my work twice in public
i won a msac individual artist grant
i (grudgingly) left a job where i was stuck and took steps to have the job i should have,
so i'm teaching my first undergrad writing course as adjunct faculty this spring

now to take another step. and do my syllabus. now to take the reins back more fully. now to be more intentionally walking in the right direction.