Year in Review: June 2010

Posted on January 7, 2011 by randomyriad

I

Big Change Part II

The biggest event of June 2010, for our clan, was Mary’s pinning ceremony. She took a giant step to becoming a nurse by graduating with her nursing degree. Our friends from California came up and camped in our backyard for a week to be here for this, and just hang out and relax in the cool away from Sacramento Valley summer. Boy! did they get cool weather. It was cloudy and rainy most of the time they were here.

After that we shifted into moving mode (house hunting, packing, worrying).

At my work the regular year ended and things got weird. Our director went on vacation. Eviction notices arrived, but not many students. We were still hoping the real estate deal would save us. It was all very confusing and unsettling.

II

Things I Wrote and Movies I watched

June 5

Journal Entry:

Allergies have come upon me even in the wet weather. Driving Rain, walking rain, settling rain, stopped now. Give me some dry weather if my allergies are going to torture me anyway.

Parent Newsletter:

As we go into this time of transition, I just want to remind parents:

1. Make your child aware of all they have accomplished this year.

2. Focus on summer adventures not the changes that will come in the fall. There will be plenty of time for preparations in August.

3. Don’t worry too much most children are better at adapting to new situations than you expect.

4. Get to know your child’s new school and, if possible, teacher as well as you can before your child gets there so you can provide better support.

June 6

Ghost World is one of my favorite movies.

I watched it again and loved it again.

June 15

Journal Entry:

At work: Rainy morning:

2 children playing/working in the block room. I am eating a breakfast PB and banana sandwich. Pat and Holly (friends from California) are in a tent among the raindrops in our backyard at home, and Mary is on a camping trip probably in the rain.

Yesterday was glorious sun and streaked white sky. Today is all gray, sodden.

June 21

Journal Entry:

The first day of summer is cool and cloudy, but no rain yet. I said good-bye to Pat and Holly this morning before work. This last week has been full and populated. Jordan (my oldest son) has been around a lot as well. No time for normal life. Mary’s pinning on Wednesday, Thursday’s art walk and the Upfront (theater), Friday True Stories (Pat’s and my favorite movie), work and swollen eyes and antihistamine.


David Byrne is inspired no matter what he does.

Saturday, the dog was sick and Mary anxious, a walk in the sunny park with thousands of bicyclists.

Then we watched Men Who Stare at Goats, and to cap it off BBQ ala Jordan.


Sunday, Pat helped me with the laundry, and we hung out at Boulevard park.

It has taken 3 days to recover my balance between the summer weirdness at work and a week of no time to myself, no reading. I really missed reading and writing. They balance me.

June 29

Journal Entry:

I have no idea what to do about anything. It all hinges on whether Mary can pass her exam (NCLEX).

June 30

Journal Entry:

After watching The Road, a post apocalypse dream of running a boarding school where hundreds of kids slept and played on a warehouse floor. There was a swimming pool.

 

Posted in California, can't really complain but, change, Check this out, Dreamtime, Family, House and home, lists, mindworks, my life, paying attention, personal history, scenes on screens, summer, Teaching and Learning, Telling Stories, thinking in words, time travel, working world | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Year in Review: May 2010

Posted on January 6, 2011 by randomyriad

I

the Beginning of the Big Change

Last May was, like most other Mays that I can recall, a swaggering, staggering drunk of a month. We look toward the change that summer brings, positive and negative. Our landlord gave us a letter that said we had to move at the end of June, and when we protested moved that back to the end of July, barely enough time for Mary to pass her nursing test. So we looked forward to being out of the mouse house, but dreaded our prospects of trying to splice together enough money to finance the move, that and finding a place to live while Mary was in job search mode. We were hopeful about my job as a pending real estate deal seemed to be the answer to all the problems facing the school, and my summer income would actually be more than my regular pay.

Still I remember a lot mental tossing and turning in the night, but the strange, or maybe not so strange, thing is that the things I was worried about would mostly resolve without too much pain only to be replaced by other worries and pains. I should just refuse to worry about things that might happen 2 months from wherever I am. They always change like clouds in the wind as they come toward me from black fearsome future storms into manageable rain or just momentary shadows that drift away into the past. Maybe I just need to watch the metamorphosis without fearing.

Mary finished her preceptorship and moved into major studying mode to pass her final exam. All three of my children were doing well in their studies. My work was light and pleasant. The whole parade was moving along into summer, a little shaky, like a marching band that had been marching for too many miles wondering when this particular parade was ending.

II

Journal Entries

A Roller Coaster Of Feelings and Attitude

May 1

Dreams:

I could see the hangman’s plan in my mind. he didn’t have to tell me about it. I could just put the noose around the man’s neck and tie it off to a post so that as they rode away toward the gallows the noose tightened and strangled him, a simple plan indeed.

I was cutting meat, covered in barbecue sauce, in a thrift store. My mother told me that she had not washed the cutting board beforehand. That worried me a little.

May 8

Flat tire/screwed

 

My day is skewered by a screw in the night

road to pick up Dustin pulling to the middle

faster harder pulling

“Can you order those in any size?”

Turned around and back up the gravel drive

and to bed

up early

no writing in me

errands and business

no life, just business

I don’t want business

I want life

thought, exchange, BREATH

I don’t want a beautiful car, or comfort

I can sit for hours in a cold house

occupied in thoughts that fall away

with the sound of a voice

where do they retreat to?

May 11

Only Part of This Always Makes Sense

coming into the chaotic finale

dissonance creeping in

The broad sweeps of angularity

creating competing waves

that bounce

crashing against the lip of the world

rolling back to the middle

as other waves spread from center

moving energetically outward.

May 17

My thoughts went through a train from Kerouac and Cassidy to my cousin Jon and how they were all con men not really producing anything but paying attention to themselves and their id desires.

“What are you thinking about?” Mary asked.

I couldn’t think of how to explain it to her at the time. I knew she didn’t have the time for me to explain it all and give context to the thoughts so she could understand them.

“Random stuff,” I said.

I am trying hard not to be phony, but maybe that is avoiding real commitment.

 

May 21

I am feeling like I am no good at the world. I can’t focus or be courageous. I am hanging on paychecks like tiny branches off of a mile of cliff. I can’t breathe, sleep or understand my dreams. I can’t say I have direction or goals, I am adrift from paycheck to paycheck.

 

May 22

What would a person do to change?

Margot (my landlady) handed me two hand written notes telling us we had to move out by June 30. I tried to explain that we would not be able to rent another place by then.

May 23

I am going to be grown up and be happy with my life, no matter what, and work on the things that matter to me and make Mary happy. I am not desiring. I am flame and reason and love. Watch me burn!

 

May 25

I am deadly tired, and I lose all my thoughts when I am like this. I am dragged down by a sense of impending doom. But, there is still music, The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street. What a wild, exuberant, mad time that must have been. Why can’t I find that spark that shines beyond all this grubbing for dollars. I want to reach into the throat of darkness and pull my dream out, wrench it, tear it from its embryonic chamber, chew it and spit it into the world.

 

May 26

I feel myself developing in slow motion or time lapse or a combination. I come awake in the weirdest moments after moving as if through a gelatinous dream.


May 28

I’ve got no words today. I drew pictures with Ellery this morning.

 

May 29

Sitting and working with Ellery was important yesterday, not over-thinking the process. Maybe that is the key, just letting life unfold without all these desires. I find it difficult to separate from mindless entertainment (video games). Why do I need to be kept busy? Why not busy myself with real world things? Show as much attention to life problems as I show to working with children?

What do I get joy out of?

When I am really into music either listening or playing, when it is just a part of me.

When I am involved in a good conversation with a thoughtful person I trust.

When I show someone something, or explain something in a way that helps them make sense of a piece of the world.

When a piece of the world becomes enlightened in me in a way that moves understanding of my life to new level.

When I am truly in myself in a place with no feelings of need to be anywhere else.

When I look at these journal entries, I feel that I have again fallen asleep and need to wake up. I was in turmoil but I was grappling with big ideas. I need be awake more to my life. That is what the struggle is all about.

Posted in All part of the process, can't really complain but, change, conversations, Dreamtime, Family, House and home, internal landscape, make your own world, mindworks, music, my life, paying attention, personal history, poetry, Questions and riddles, spring, Teaching and Learning, Telling Stories, thinking in words, time travel, visions from the dark side, whereever you go there you are, working world | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Year in Review: April 2010

Posted on January 5, 2011 by randomyriad

Pieces of April

4/1  No April Fools:

50 year annivers0ry of science fiction becoming fact

The Television Infrared Observation Satellite Program (TIROS)

The TIROS Program (Television Infrared Observation Satellite) was NASA’s first experimental step to determine if satellites could be useful in the study of the Earth. At that time, the effectiveness of satellite observations was still unproven. Since satellites were a new technology, the TIROS Program also tested various design issues for spacecraft: instruments, data and operational parameters. The goal was to improve satellite applications for Earth-bound decisions, such as “should we evacuate the coast because of the hurricane?”.

The TIROS Program’s first priority was the development of a meteorological satellite information system. Weather forecasting was deemed the most promising application of space-based observations.

TIROS proved extremely successful, providing the first accurate weather forecasts based on data gathered from space. TIROS began continuous coverage of the Earth’s weather in 1962, and was used by meteorologists worldwide. The program’s success with many instrument types and orbital configurations lead to the development of more sophisticated meteorological observation satellites.

People are so infinitely inventive. We write science fiction and make it fact. 50 years later, we can communicate instantly across the world with millions of people. Maybe we can come up with some ideas about how to survive another 50 years.


4/6

Report:

Animals thrive without oxygen at sea bottom

Creatures found where only microbes and viruses were thought to survive.

Janet Fang/ Nature News

These animals  spend their entire lives in oxygen-starved waters in a basin at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. They have no mitochondria. Life takes so many forms! How can it be stopped?

4/11

Mary worked the first shift of her preceptorship at a hospital in the neighboring county. This is the final clinical experience in RN training where the student works under a nurse preceptor doing most of the tasks of an RN. She worked 12 hour shifts, when her preceptor was not sent home early due to low census, starting at 6 am. Early mornings are a big challenge for Mary, so she was tense and tired during much of this period, but she did not have class only a few assignments to complete.

4/13

Journal Entry:

I am feeling harassed this morning. Drizzle. Hesitance, irritation with the dog. Woke up early again before Mary’s alarm. No inspiration so far. I will have a wet walk in the woods to work.

The small woman from Kenya gets on the bus, and makes a little smile inside me. I wonder how her American journey is progressing. She has a bright red umbrella that marks her as someone who is not from around here.

A young woman in hole strewn jeans and carrying a bottle of orange juice looks glass downly. (?)


4/14-21

Natural Events on Land and in Air:

the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull,  resumed erupting after a brief pause, causing floods and throwing volcanic ash several miles up in the atmosphere which led to air travel disruption in northwest Europe for six days, including the closure of airspace over many parts of Europe.


4/20 and far into the future

BP Oil Spill!

Need I say more. I don’t think so!

 

4/21

Dream:

Tim McVeigh was working at the school (BCS).

Hazel splashed her feet in the puddles and the splattering water froze arabesque patterns around her legs.


4/25

I watched this movie a couple of times, once with my daughter and youngest son. Women in Austin, Texas come together and make roller derby happen, and then all kinds of interesting issues ensue. Real life does not get better than this, and with music by And You Shall Know Us By the Trail of Dead and tough women on skates, you know it rocked. It is a great story that no one could invent except by living it.


Posted in Bus Writing, can't really complain but, Check this out, Dreamtime, Family, mindworks, music, my life, paying attention, personal history, Questions and riddles, scenes on screens, Teaching and Learning, Telling Stories, thinking in words, time travel, wonder world, working world | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Year in Review: March 2010

Posted on January 4, 2011 by randomyriad

March was a busy month with a lot on its strange and springy mind.

March 1 – March 31

We started our new class calendar. We thought of six things (watermelon, shamrock, butterfly, fire hat, rainbow, and heart) and made simple repeating pattern for the month.

This is how it turned out. Along the way the children learned about symmetry by folding and cutting hearts, shamrocks and butterflies. They noticed the diagonal pattern that emerged as we got further into the month. I think they probably learned about writing numbers and sequence. We enjoyed watching it develop each day adding a new piece of our March.

March 2

The Railroad Man from Skagway

“Didja hear about the fire yesterday?” asked the tattered looking man waiting at the bus stop by my house. I was on my way to work. We talked little about the fire which I had not heard about. He said he was from “Skagway, you know, up there in Alaska.”

Skagway, Alaska in the spring.

“I work on the railroad, and I been comin’ down here for the winter. Everybody leaves. You can do some hiking, if it’s not too icy, and the library’s nice. It has internet.”

He reminds me of an Amish farmer except the thing about the internet.

“My families from Auburn, but they all migrated up to Alaska. So I jes’ followed.” He bounced from foot to foot and squinted into the sunlight glaring off of the mirrored surface of frozen puddles in the gutter across the street.

“I don’t mind the ice too much. It shines things up real nice. It does get treacherous walkin’ “

March 3

Journal Entry:

Soft and sticky feet to move a bench in an athletic obstacle course.

I have no idea what this means.

March 5

I started reading The Wizard of OZ to my class. They loved it and made me read it again when we finished a couple of weeks later.

March 6

I finished reading All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy to myself.

March 11

Mary and I went to see the Soweto Gospel Choir. They put on an incredible show, beautiful a cappella harmonies, great drumming and dancing, and just plain fun and inspiring music. And the staging, costumes and storytelling that accompanied added extra dimensions to make it totally encompassing. I had the music with me for days afterward and still after a year, I just have a feeling when I hear their music that I didn’t have before watching them perform.

March 14

My parents called to tell me that my Aunt Louise is dead. We talked about her. My father revealed that she was my grandmother’s  illegitimate child. My grandfather did not find out about her until after they were married. Louise lived with other relatives until almost a year after my grandparents were married. My grandmother had a wild side and my Aunt Louise was definitely part of it.

Louise was a tough dame who thought my dad and uncle were sissies because they did not fight enough. I was afraid of her when I was little, but I always loved to visit her house in the summer because she had a pool. She had a living room that children where not allowed into. It had a bowl of wax fruit on the coffee table and a lot of white furniture. I remember that room more than any other room in her house.

March 16

Spider Dream I:

The room was filled with pale fine sand, scattered and piled with a path cleared around the edges. People, dressed in Victorian English fashion, milled about. I searched through the drawers in the walls and found a bright white glass bulb. I dropped the bulb. It shattered at the edge of the room where there was less sand on the floor. I found a broom and began to sweep, but found the broom useless. I went down a hallway, went left into a dark passageway which led to a brightly lit kitchen with a checkered tile floor. My grandmother was standing there lost in thought wearing an apron. I spotted a well-used straw broom leaning by the back door. I grabbed it and, without speaking, ran out. I returned to the mess and began to sweep. This broom worked well, but I encountered another obstacle. The room had holes in the floor that because of an optical illusion were not visible. As I was sweeping I had to be careful to feel the edges and step down into the hole. I was finally about to sweep the last little bit of glass up when the thin legs of a spider began to move slowly in the pile. I was in the middle of trying to figure out how to handle this new puzzle when I woke up.

March 17

Spider Dream II:

It was something that happened only once in a great while. The ritual of the spider. I pulled on the strand of web next to my face, and it grew thicker as I pulled it until it trailed away from me in the strong breeze, a thick cob web, with ragged dusty strands. The small spider sat about a foot from my face manipulating tiny webs in its mandibles. This happened many times. People kept reminding me how important the ceremony was, but finally I threw the spider away in disgust and left.

March 18

Carl’s Natural Cooking Experiment

Carl digs and breaks up clods of dirt in a plastic bowl with a stick, mixing in bits of dry noodles he has brought outside from the collage table.

“I need more tonguinni,” he says and goes back for more noodles.

March 29

Journal Entry:

I must just write, and write and not worry about what comes onto the paper. It will just come whatever, and I will write whatever I am. Huh?

March 30

I went to see Scrap Arts with my class. It was loud and fun and even the 2 to 4 year old crowd enjoyed it, though they often covered their ears. The older kids were intrigued by all the different instruments that the musicians made from junk. The music was pretty basic, but with an interesting presentation, very enthusiastic, athletic, and educational.

3/31

And we’ll go out singing!

Oh Lumpy Pie

sung to “America the Beautiful”


Oh, lumpy pie

Oh, polymath,

Oh, eyes doom and dread,

cantilevered mystified

in league with all the dead.

My own true love.

From the sky above

falling through the trees

into a vat of melted wax

from a hive of killer bees.

Posted in Bus Writing, Check this out, conversations, dancing, Dreamtime, Family, Fiction, mindworks, music, my life, Other peoples words, paying attention, personal history, poetry, Questions and riddles, spring, Teaching and Learning, Telling Stories, thinking in words, time travel, Wacky World, winter, Word play, working world | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Year in Review: February 2010

Posted on January 3, 2011 by randomyriad

I

My Life

At the coop school, my shrinking class was planning a garden project, and I was doing a lot of writing and thinking about my work with children.

February is often for me a  passage way that connects January to March, that starts out dim, damp and chill and by the end warms and brightens to almost spring. I can’t remember anything much happening in February.

II

My Region

The Winter Olympics came to our area, but had almost no impact on my life, being way to expensive to even dream of attending, plus you had to have a passport to get into Canada (actually to come back. How crazy is that?) I watched The Colbert Report for updates like everyone else.

III

Writing

I was struggling with many projects River of Dreams and Aranansi and a couple that went nowhere.

Here are some of my very scattered and dream laced journal entries:

2/1/2010:

Bus conversation:

“Mind over matter.”

“We’ll find out what’s wrong with you at the autopsy.”


2/9/2010:

A balloon flew up into the clouds over the river away from a small boy.


2/10/2010:

I am at a loss abut what to write. I seem to have lost momentum over the last couple of days.

I dreamed about New England Land of rolling green hills and Grecian colonial style houses as if in a painting or tapestry, but still real. A park of lush, spacious green with white stately buildings, there were children playing where they shouldn’t. It wasn’t ready yet.

2/12/2010:

Today I have time and nothing to say. I am blurred by sleepiness. I read 2 novels by Brautigan. I believe I have now read everything he published.

“Morality is the blind spot of the brain.” A Season in Hell

“Kimmeria: the land of shadows and whirlwinds”

2/12/2010

Penumbra= Almost Shadow: the animal people of the shadows

Tenebra= Blind Town

Thurible: Censor

“She dazzles like the dawn and consoles like the night.”

(I believe I was reading Dante’s Inferno at this point as well as A Season in Hell)

2/18/2010:

I was hiding in a classroom were a lesson on Icelandic was in progress, and she was hiding there too. We started touching and knew we had to find a place to be alone away from the students. The teacher was writing on a giant Kindle board in perfect fonts both Icelandic and English.

I took her to the house I lived in with my family when I was a teenager. Everything was piled around and the beds all unmade but sheeted and bedding piled everywhere. I was in the large downstairs bedroom when people came gliding out of a secret door, 2 giant women looking for my wife, Mary.

“Is she here?”

I didn’t know.

There was a long procession of these hunched and walk/gliding figures off into some vague misty land at the back of the house.

2/20/2010:

Too many children and dyed rags hidden under the folds of cardboard.

What about Baudelaire and men in France who did not seem to know about children. Sebold also. Belano seems to have had some contact with children. Salinger had children and enjoyed them.

Children are distracting and irritating when you are trying to think of anything on a deeper level. Their thoughts and lives are lived on the surface of their world. Their concerns are usually simple, but not easily expressed. They are a puzzle because they don’t have a clear enough thought process to communicate what is important to them. They must act it out or sing or dance or draw.

I think somewhere along the way we let words replace all the languages our bodies contain. We pour it all into words, and words are not big enough or have leaks. So much is lost of who we are, and that is where art comes in.

And yet living a life around children makes it difficult to actually work as an artist, but especially a writer, for words are so obviously inadequate when you are trying to take care of all the little boring tasks and big worries of raising small human beings.

2/21/2010:

Puppet to Another Puppet: I am not a puppet and I won’t be manipulated. No strings. See!

The puppeteer is visible above operating the puppet but the strings are not visible.

“Do Not  Move”

(I was thinking a lot about all kinds of Puppets)

2/23/2010:

Japanese face painting

My dreams are lost in the drone of life.

IV

A February Poem


Every shred of calligraphic skin

shed in lumps

and spread thin.

Time bights that hand

and tears

with teeth that hold iron

  begin to grin.

Posted in All part of the process, Aranansi, Bus Writing, conversations, Dreamtime, Family, Fiction, file folders and nut shells, House and home, mindworks, my life, novel projects, Other peoples words, paying attention, personal history, poetry, Puppetry, Questions and riddles, River of Dreams, scenes on screens, Teaching and Learning, Telling Stories, thinking in words, time travel, visions from the dark side, winter, Word play, working world | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment