Renewal

I remember having lengthy conversations with multiple people this year on the concepts of growth and evolution. I had challenged them to find significant life experiences that helped form part of their worldviews, and was attempting to discern the nature of self-growth. To believe that we are the accumulated sums of history and cannot, therefore, be static individuals in that we are always being shaped by the force of the world implies a sense of differentiation between growth, evolution, and change.

I believe we can grow as people – both individually and collectively, but evolution occurs as a process of growth. A byproduct, if you will.

And now, to look at growth through two different lenses aimed at the same constant, I give you the Rust Belt. First, the sorrow of size. Second, the hope of the past. Only by looking back, can we sometimes make progress.

The Shrillest Highs and Lowest Lows

Guided home after a long (short?) night and bus to the airport at three in the morning. I needed to be here to recharge on everything before going back to face a new year. It helps to be away from all that the world can be if only for a short time, insulated in the confines of this house. Freezing rain has been falling for two days and there are supposed to be up to twelve fresh inches of snow by tomorrow, wiping fresh the land.

I know this is old by a few weeks already, but I have been enjoying it none the less and it never hurts to be reminded of that which is being left behind, for often we still carry it within us.

I’m almost afraid to try making my own list, but already have ideas for next year.

The mountains across the water look starkly vivid against the pale sky today. For the past week or two, their outlines have been clarifying in the winter air and now they seem poised to slice the cold ceiling. I am at the kitchen table with my second cup of coffee for the day, trying to get in gear and produce tangible results. Listening, again, to the Lips and I can not say for certain whether they are the most soothing sound for the morning. I was just informed last night that they release concert recordings online for the ticket holders, and so am now relapsing into this summer’s concert at Marymoor Park.

I need to find a job. I need structure to my days; they are too long with nothing of substance to fill them.

Winter is the worst time of the year to be alone.

Patterns Emerge

The coffee shop, again. The resumes, still being passed out. A little over a year ago I was in this position and had no great love for it. Now, here, again, I follow the same winding paths. Is it my lack of ambition that leads me to pursue dead-ends and hopeless causes? A lack of foresight? I love what I do, but think that I would give it up if I could. too often, it isn’t worth the cost of late nights and time spent alone. So I drift. I blame my drifting on anything I can. The economy, the weather, bad luck, the pattern of stars in the sky or windswept leaves blowing down the empty street.

Looking back over the last year, I see huge differences, and then I see that nothing has changed. I have no sustainable long-term future work, or realistic ideas of such. I am still trying to scribble an illiterates version of a novel. I still spend too much time drinking coffee and beer and floating from the past to the present.

I am an explorer of nothing. An astro-naught. I sail over the bottom of the ocean floor where there are no landmarks mar the abyssal plain, and no sound hums in my ears as sweetly as the call of the calving whale.

Static

In the rain, today, with the sound of Sigur Ros echoing from broken headphones, I thought that perhaps the static was not a bad addition. If anything, it fit more perfectly with the music and the place than ever before. Melodies such as that stay with me, and become entwined with thoughts and concrete images.

Now, forever, Sigur Ros is the rainy overpass, the damp newspaper, and the tail lights below.

The Lonely Hearts Club

Templeton and James the cook in his dress whites and I
In my plastic apron went drinking all night at a speakeasy where
Silas played piano and we all
Drank gin together.
This is where one night Theodore became Teddy T and
Everyone had lost each other at one point or another.
Murphy, the progenitor of sorts, worked as a sign painter those
Days and nights he spent with us in the corner booth
Wedged up against the stove and the bar.

This was the first winter I knew Templeton.

The ice clung thickly to the windows and Silas would
Laugh about the panes only because he had more than enough of his own
But when he sat down at the piano and the light
Hit the rough stage and bounced through everyone’s drinks
To reflect back with such glittering promise, Silas sounded so free.
And then when the company was select and matched the sign
Over the door would Silas sing sad.
Templeton would sit at the end of the bench hunching forward
With his heel tapping a different tempo, and James -
Half gone most of the time -
Never paid attention other than to clap and shout for another song or
Drink while Murphy faded back and forth in the shadow of the corner.
I ordered another round and the stove popped murmured and spit.
Outside the wind crawled over the roof and down the back alley,
Whistling through the empty bottles and between the snowy dumpsters.

Work was slow for Murphy in weather like that and he would visit James and
Me at the diner where James cooked hash and eggs and I washed dishes so
The early risers could have their breakfasts
Sitting in a line at the counter with newspapers and coffee and the plate glass window
Letting the first light of grey morning through from the night.
I scrubbed another plate free from yellowed yolk as James cracked shells to the
Chuckle and shiver of the skillet and somewhere
On the other side of town
Silas was tiptoeing through the cold whipping wind and gusty snow

Warm in the kitchen I hummed Silas’s songs and drummed counter
Point rhythms in the sink while Murphy sketched designs by the cash register
Scrawling elegant loops and rolls in black filament like tattoos on the paper
To be later applied to an arm or neck
And dreamed of his masterpiece to be painted some day

Whereas the names of everyone I have ever loved shall be tattooed in the crook of my left elbow, to be indelibly marked with scrawling cursive script in jet black ink

And the combined shape and weight of these names shall form an exact replication of the sun tendrils visible at noon oh three when obscured by the solar eclipse of January eighteenth

The Arc of Vision

When the sibilant sigh of wet pavement kissed tires
purled across the nightened street with
desperation and a passion frightening,
crying loss and hollowness through
and through again

Simultaneously,
the smoker
exhales languorously and a sheen
of vapor and lust slides from her lips
to twist lazily, caressingly,
through the disheveled tendrils of her hair
and into the empty sky

knowing the smoldering scent
of damp leaves
piled heavily with grenadine wishes,
plied gently with genteel disarray,
an aching burn
of potash and sulfites,
intricacy,
the twining arc of vision that hears
more than sees
the whispered fare-thee
-well of departure

Three Day Weekend

The inauguration is tomorrow and I think that we will be watching it in class. I’m torn between apprehension and an overwhelming expectation of feeling an anti-climax. With all the hype and the media-coverage and the this and the that, I wonder how I will feel after the oath is taken, the speech spoken. Still, historic moments are just that, historic.

Week two went well. The new group of students was markedly different from the first week, but as the days went by we started to open up to each other. It intrigues me how similar and opposite they can be at the same time, and I found myself reflecting often upon both my own days in high school, and my days in the teaching program two years ago. I have been riding a wave of jubilant euphoria off and on this past week as I first struggled to race through a formal application and then coasted on the laurels of having done so. If everything goes as I have been lead to believe, by the middle of this week I should be a fully contracted employee of the school district, complete with salary, benefits, and all those obligations of going to meetings and the such.

Friday night I saw Gran Torino and am still trying to process my thoughts about the film. I feel that while it is well made, I prefer other recent Eastwood endeavours such as Million Dollar Baby and Mystic River. Heavy matter, and emotions were running strong throughout, but that is what good art is supposed to do, right? Incite discussion and emotional responses? If only everything could awaken a passion so easily. The O.A.R. concert on Saturday was enjoyable, even as I realized I hardly knew their songs. It was fun to get out and do something different, and with a three day weekend, when else to do it?

Now I have a roast in the slow cooker, one of my favored recipes involving crasins and pineapple, and season five of The Wire in the dvd player. Only a bit of work needing to be done so that I can watch and eat with a clear conscience, and a nice night at that.

8-4

I’m about to head off to bead in anticipation of my second week as a working drone. My first week teaching was amazing and I’m sorry I haven’t written anything about it yet. All of my fears and worries and neurotic insecurities were put to rest by an absolutely wonderful first week back at SOTA and it could not have been better. The kids were awesome, the material was fun, and more than anything else, it was just purely relaxing and it all felt so right.
I’m glad that I took the time off that I did, not only because if I had gotten a job straight off the bat, this opportunity never would have come around, but also because I truly believe the time on my own helped shape me and prepare me for this time. Thinking back over the decisions that were made, I’m happy with all of them, no matter how hard they were at the time. Miraculously enough, everything seemed to work out for the better, especially the news I got Friday morning.

For some incomprehensible reason of divine mercy, I was informed that as in the best of all possible scenarios, my services as a substitute would not be required indefinitely. However, for the rest of the semester at SOTA, the powers that be would like me to work as a contracted employee, rather than as a on-call full-time substitute.
Salary
Benefits
Gigantic Foot In The Door For Next Year
Paid Sick Days
Paid Go To Meetings On Weekends To Make Your School Better Days
Did I Mention Benefits?

I have no idea how or why, especially in a time of budget crises and fiscal insecurity such as we are now, but I am jumping at the chance. That means spending the weekend working on an actual application and getting it ready in less time than one might think would be prudent. But if all continues to go as it seems to be going, I will be a real boy soon enough.

Never thought I’d be this happy about working.