Year in Review: December 2010

Posted on January 13, 2011 by randomyriad

I

What Happened, What I Wrote, And What I Read

December 7

Journal Entry:

Every day is packed full. Now the wind starts. Yesterday evening I was so tired and negative, all was black and bleak. Tonight I am feeling fine even though I got the bad news that I will not be able to use vacation pay to supplement my 3 weeks of leave.

Raemi and I planned our next parent night. We worked out the weeks staffing, and I had a good conference with parents. I was also able to finish documentation on our big map project. Oh yeah! and do the most of the laundry. I was awesome.

December 12

Quote:

An old fire will make a dark husk for itself and settle into the middle– Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Journal Entry:

There is no night here uninterrupted by the sound of machines moving.

December 15

Journal Entry:

My mind is b0roughing furiously into itself, trying to find a framework to express the layers of reality.

December 17

Journal Entry:

I am digging up old work and putting it out furiously on paper always digging.

December 19

Journal Entry:

How long will it take me to fill in this notebook (my new journal), maybe not too long if I write daily. I think handwriting is a different way of thinking, a little slower than typing. In some way my mind works to the rhythm with all this room to write in.

Mary is stressed, but dealing with her new job which has not started except in her mind which is always full of plans, amazing plans for our future. I just go from day to day like a monkey in a tree never thinking beyond the next banana. She is often 3 trees ahead and what about next year.


The minutes feel full to bursting while I work at my desk, music, words, ideas, images, the thought of new music and words. I am reading the Reefs of Earth by R. A. Lafferty and will start Summerland by Michael Chabon soon. I listened to Mahler‘s 8th symphony, mostly beautiful and complex, at times transcendent and ethereal. It has a lot of chorale and vocal sections, but most of that fits so nicely with the instrumentation. The voices are instruments. Words are sounds, especially since they are in German and so meaningless to me.

December 23

Journal Entry:

I am living inside myself. How do I get out?

I edited and rearranged Pieces of the Mirror (some of my mostly unread unfinished works).

There have been times when I naturally connected with people and made them part of my life. I wonder if that is possible anymore. My life flows, moves in a song. I do not sell or steer too much.

December 25

Journal Entry:

Christmas with our children. We played Apples to Apples, listened to I pod music and Jordan provided helicopter antics. What a pleasant and laid back day.

December 26

Journal Entry:

Everybody came to our house, after a stressful preparation. Mary gets wound up, finally is OK, and I am so clueless sometimes (misunderstand and just space out). Mom and Dad were late as usual.

December 29 and into the new year

I went back to work today, and in the middle of organizing my classroom, I was called into the office and confronted with an allegation of child abuse by one of my clients. I was baffled and in shock. Then my director came and told me she had faith in me, but she had to put me on administrative leave with pay until the investigation was over. I spent 3 long days on administrative leave. I was not too fearful. I was just anxious to be there with my colleagues starting the new quarter with my class. I am so thankful for the emotional and administrative support I got during this ordeal. It made a huge difference in my attitude.

December 30

Journal Entry:

1. Reality is surprising. You can’t guess what is going to happen, my director asking me to come to her office as my day was finishing up and while there finding out that I have been implicated in an incident of abuse.  I couldn’t have come up with that in my imagination.

2. Finding a sense of history, a sense that what happens in the story is connected to a broader world and series of cultural and historical events and movements.

3. Connected to who I am and how my mind puts things together. Sense of humor and theories of space and time, dreams and confusions that make the story more real.

4. Many voices, angles: not just one narrator or approach to the material.
December 31

Journal Entry:

I am looking over the year and feeling vaguely positive in the face of obstacles.

Resolutions:

1. Be productive every day: Do something that carries over to following days.

2. Keep a positive attitude while paying honest attention to what is going on in my life.

3. Appreciate what I have and seek to make a positive difference for the people I have contact with each day.


II

Conclusion: The End is the Beginning

The beginning of last month already seems so distant. I have gone through some monumental changes in perspective and gained a new attitude toward writing, my work and my life. I feel that I am a writer now and really know that no matter what I must write everyday, even if that means scribbling some ideas in a journal I keep in my pocket. The act of pushing thoughts into words makes my mind work in a more positive way.  In this coming year I intend to post at least once a day on my blog, and keep ideas in store so that I have material to draw on. I hope to finish a draft of another novel and finish some short stories, and of course poems will happen every now and then. I am excited about a year of writing. I hope some of my (most likely imaginary) handful of readers will stick with me through the adventure and chaos of another year.

Posted in All part of the process, can't really complain but, change, Check this out, developing relationships, discovery and recovery, Dreamtime, Family, Fiction, lists, mindworks, my life, Other peoples words, paying attention, personal history, playing games, Questions and riddles, Teaching and Learning, Telling Stories, the end is the beginning, thinking in words, time travel, winter, working world | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Year in Review: November 2010

Posted on January 12, 2011 by randomyriad

Winter Comes Early

November 1San Francisco Giants’ Pat Burrell (left to right) Brian Wilson, Aubrey Huff and Buster Posey celebrate after defeating the Texas Rangers to win Game 5 of the Major League Baseball championship and to clinch the World Series in Arlington, Texas.(REUTERS/Brian Snyder) # All the long suffering San Francisco Giant fans (the ones that hadn’t given up or died) finally saw them win the big one. My sister and I have been Giant fans since we were very young. We saw Bobby Bonds, Willie Mays, and Willie McCovey play at Candlestic park. We saw them struggle through the eighties when my cousin Jim Wohlford played for them and they were lousy (not Jim’s fault).

This is what he had to say about it:

“The only difference between Candlestick (Park) and San Quentin (Prison) is that at Candlestick they let you go home at night.”

We saw the 89 world series interrupted by the Loma Prieta earthquake and the Giants fold in four games, and then in 2002, take a 2 run lead into the 8th inning of the sixth game after having won 3 of the first 5 games, only to lose that game in the eighth and the last game as well. So close. But, now it has been done, and, seems to me, by a kind of unlikely crew. How do you get names like Buster Posey and Aubrey Huff without making them up.

November 2

There were some elections here.

November 6

In a desperate attempt to cheer myself up I watched Mystery Men, one of my all time favorite silly movies. WithTom Waits and Paul Rubens, it is both weird and silly. Just the thing to distract me from my weary pre-winter blues.

November 13

Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi (center) was released after serving seven years under house arrest. (REUTERS/Stringer)

November 15

Journal Entry:

I am changing my approach again. I cannot do everything. I will do what I can and in a timely way, prioritizing. Just like we handle nap: let the ones who sleep go to sleep, help the ones who will go to sleep with a little help, and then deal with the difficult ones.

November 19

Journal Entry:

Many interesting conversations today. I walked into a meeting as I arrived at work that went for an hour and then later talked with Barbara about winter camp, temperament and parenting. Then I had a wonderful conversation with Sarah about life and inspiration and the blending of that into work.

November 20

Dustin and I went to the Showbox at the Market to see Built to Spill.

Journal Entry:

We walked around Seattle downtown trying to stay worm waiting for the concert. We ate yakasobe noodles in a deserted courtyard of Pike’s Place as a somber security guard shuffled around sliding the grills down in front of the shop doors and exits and locking locks. “You guys can finish up, but this area is closed so you’ll have to let yourself out up there.” He pointed to the exit sign. A sad bored looking big foot, roughly carved, loitered  in one corner, and a giant squid flew wriggling on wires overhead.

November 22

I drove to work late through a gathering storm, and took 2 1/2 hours coming home, driving on a sheet of ice most of the way.

November 24

Journal Entry:

Cormac McCarthy is in my dreams a sad old man with a teenage daughter. He is afraid of not living long enough to see her grow up.

“It will kill you graveyard dead”

People say things like this.

November 25

Journal Entry:

Thanksgiving

Mary, Rowan, Dustin and I piled in the car and slid out to pick up Jordan through the snow and slush. We stopped for beer and made it home. A pleasant afternoon and evening with our fine and intelligent children. They are so civilized and pleasant. More due to Mary than me. She has a way of expecting people to behave decently that makes it happen. I just take what comes.

November 26

Journal Entry:

The snow has blown and washed away in the predawn storm. Scattered traces remain. The streets are all wet and ice free for the first time since last Saturday (11/20). The rain clicked sideways at the window like sand or ice, but just water pushed by wind.

November 28

I finished and published the last segment of my first novel, River of Dreams, on my blog!

WikiLeaks and five major newspapers from Spain (El País), France (Le Monde), Germany (Der Spiegel), the United Kingdom (The Guardian), and the United States (The New York Times) started to simultaneously publish the first 220 of 251,287 leaked confidential—but not top secret—diplomatic cables from 274 US embassies around the world, dated from 28 December 1966 to 28 February 2010.

Posted in change, Check this out, conversations, developing relationships, discovery and recovery, Dreamtime, Family, Fiction, House and home, mindworks, music, my life, NaNoWriMo, novel projects, Of the Road and The River, paying attention, personal history, River of Dreams, scenes on screens, Teaching and Learning, Telling Stories, thinking in words, time travel, working world | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Year in Review:October 2010

Posted on January 11, 2011 by randomyriad

I

Our New Life

October was another up and down month, but mostly we were slowly getting used to our new life.

II

Entries and Events

October 1

Journal Entry:

Sitting with the women (I am the only man working there) in the staff room, I am comfortable. I am not worried about the big stuff. I just keep myself and fit into the puzzle of the place.

October 2

Journal Entry:

I had dreams of parent night and such. My mind is full of work. I don’t mind it much, except I am waking up at 5 am whether I have to or not, and, because my mind is framed in work, I am not writing poetry.

October 4

Journal Entry:

I am so tired. Last night the dog took a literal nose dive off of the bed. I am trying to figure out how to sleep on Sunday nights.

Dream:

A bird staggering down a steep hill talking as it died.

October 5

Journal Entry:

I am beginning to get a handle on the whole job. I started a bulletin board. Next I need make a system for observations.

October 6

Sarah is so emotional and brilliant with children. Her instincts and excitement are invading the class with a light and energy that carry us through our days.

Cheryl keeps us grounded and steady. I fall somewhere in between. We have a good balance.

October 7

Journal Entry:

I am overwhelmed and whelmed and still hanging in. I know I have to do more.

October 8

Journal Entry:

I cannot stand meanness in any form. I outrages me and makes me feel out of balance, full of cracks down to my foundation. Petty business disgusts me, the way landlords niggle nickles and dimes out of poor tenants and think themselves justified, the way people moralize about religious points of view working politically to make people who do not share their views subject to them. It all seems too small and frightened. Where is courage? Why do people cower so?

Something must have pissed me off, I can’t remember what of a hundred things it could have been.

Our orientation went well. I believe everyone had a feeling of being in the right place.

October 9

Journal Entry:

I wake up at 4:00 am (on a Sunday)and there is no going back to sleep. Listening to Tom Waits,  Pet Sounds (Beach Boys), The National’s new album (High Violet), watching the clouds turn gray as the morning comes up. Coffee and cheerios. Maybe I will go for a walk.

My life here is so like a ghost, haunting the early morning dark, while life goes on late into the night. My living is among people I do not know well in Everett, who are becoming friends, little by little.

October 10

Journal Entry:

I felt out of sorts yesterday. My life is so strung up, and dictated by limitations of time and energy. I wake up early and have to go to bed so early. Weekends are seeming like distractions form work. I haven’t found a rhythm in all this yet.

October 13

World Events:

Chilean miner Osman Araya (right) is welcomed by his wife Angelica as he comes out of the Fenix rescue capsule after been brought to the surface on  following a 10-week ordeal in the collapsed San Jose mine, near Copiapo, 800 km north of Santiago, Chile. Araya was the sixth from the 33 trapped miners to be lifted from underground. (HUGO INFANTE/AFP/Getty Images)

Can you imagine what it was like to be stuck in a caved in tunnel for 10 weeks? I can’t. I don’t even want to try. Human beings are amazing!

October 14

Journal Entry:

I am alright with it all. I have decided to go with the flow, whatever that might be.

October 15

Journal Entry:

I set up my computer. It runs so well. I will be able to many things with it.

October 17

Journal Entry:

A beautiful day for a drive yesterday and lovely sandwiches from a bakery in Edison. We (Mary and I) heard an eagle as we walked around the Padilla Bay Interpretive Center and found the tide too high to get to the beach.

October 23

Journal Entry:

I am weathering this bit of rough weather. I feel shaken and weary, but still hopeful that things will continue getting better and that the things that are broken will eventually get fixed. Mary needs more work. I need to commute less and have more time to work on things besides my job. Rowan is settling little by little. Jordan is into his life again. Dustin is back at school a little shaky at first, but smoothing as he goes. My job is going very well as far as I can tell. The benefits for Mary and Rowan need to be figured out, though.

The Beach Boys, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” is running in my head.


III

Books I read or listened to in October

I listened to books on my 2 hour commute and did a lot of reading during my lunch breaks.


“Middlemarch” by George Elliot (one of the true classics of the 19 century and deservedly so)

“The Human Stain” by Philip Roth (interesting and very well written, he puts a lot of himself in his work, which is both makes the work stronger and harder to read)

“Everything is Illuminated” by Jonathon Safran Foer (A bit uneven and manipulative, but very funny, possibly the best novel written by someone under 25)

“The Known World” by Edward P. Jones (Awesome in its scope and power. He crafts a novel like a quilt or tapestry.)


Posted in All part of the process, developing relationships, Dreamtime, Family, Fiction, House and home, mindworks, music, my life, paying attention, personal history, Questions and riddles, Teaching and Learning, Telling Stories, thinking in words, time travel, working world | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Year in Review: September 2010

Posted on January 10, 2011 by randomyriad

I

Everything Has Changed

As of September our life was almost completely transformed from what it was at the beginning of the year. The threads still connected us that other time and the changes were almost all positive, but we were still learning the map of our new life. Mary was working more than full time as a nurse. I had a job in Everett, commuting 60 miles and minutes each way. By the end of September, Rowan and Jordan had moved over by the university campus. Dustin was still with us, but he is growing so rapidly in intellect and maturity, I am newly amazed on an almost daily basis at his ever expanding ideas about people, the world and the universe.

We had got through all of the chaos without a financial meltdown or too much panic. As always we, as a family, stuck together and muddled through. And, thanks mostly to Mary’s determination and genius planning, We came out of it all stronger and more prepared for challenges ahead. There was a lot of stress and swearing and few scary moments, but we tottered over the high wire to the other side. Though, we were still not ready to take any bows.

II

Journal Entries and a Poem

September 2

I walked long around the Railroad Trail this evening, mostly through the woods. Things look like they are going to work out.

September 3

The house slowly comes together. Mary is working more than full time. I am starting to prepare myself mentally for the onslaught of 35+ hours a week and a long commute.

September 4

Working on blog all morning, then out and in with all the wood from the back yard and mowed the lawn.

September 7

I am not writing. I am editing (Aranansi and River of Dreams). I have to wake up early to write. I have to start dancing, riding my bike, writing more novels, short stories, poems, learning Spanish. (see 101/1001)

September 13

I met my assistant teachers, and we will work wonders together. I like the whole team.

September 17

Sarah, my assistant (more of a co-teacher), has totally won my heart. She is so inspired and awed by each day. Even with all the layers of dust, she can see the sparkling center of whatever she is watching.

September 25

Walking Early. A bad night for Rowan and Mary, both sleeping on couches in the living room.

My job is taking over, shadowing my dreams:I am sinking down through the floor a ghost trapped under the boards trying to rise up. I wake at 4:30 am. Big and little thoughts booming in my brain, no room for sleep. I watched some John Stewart and Rachel Maddow on the computer and finally went for a walk, thoughts of the ways of people. We definitely need more sanity in the world.

September 27

I am starting to feel comfortable in my job, learning names and faces and how to be around them. I still cannot sleep on Sunday nights though.

September 28

I woke up to the dog rummaging around on the bed, and Mary fussing. Today I was tired and little discouraged, but I will work through this to the joy. It was a wagon pulling day, a tree watching day with cellophane blue water fights.

September 29

Tired at the end of a day, my voice is weird recorded. I am ready to sleep.

September 30

Walking to the End of the World


Dragons, new leaf green, the size of small dogs,

chomp in the mud beside the road.

Further on,

A man with a giant skillet,

standing next to an egg 2 feet taller than himself,

tells the history of the world.


Posted in All part of the process, Aranansi, change, developing relationships, discovery and recovery, Dreamtime, Family, House and home, mindworks, my life, novel projects, paying attention, personal history, poetry, River of Dreams, Teaching and Learning, Telling Stories, thinking in words, time travel, working world | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Year in Review: August 2010

Posted on January 9, 2011 by randomyriad

“We are forced to live as if we are free.”

John Gray in the movie “Straw Dogs”

 

Journal Entries, Dreams and a Poem

August 1

All day on applications online. I am officially unemployed.

August 2

I went out around town to Head Start. Talked to some of my friends there. Mary has her job and is feeling safe again. I am unsure of what I want. I have to let go and push on. I cannot figure out all the variables involved.

August 3

I went out to look at the Waldorf school. They are in an early 1900’s public school building. The administrator described their early 20th century curriculum. Though it is probably far ahead of where the public schools in this town are. The 6th graders practice marching. Where is the individual in this system. I see “enlightened” ideas from long ago being forced fed to students. There is music, art and science though.

August 4

A Fictional Game of Dream Hide and Seek

A maze or labyrinth fun house with shifting walls and waterways with boats and tracks for various sized trains, some small carrying messages, pneumatic tubes some large enough to carry people, slides and shoots some for balls and some for people. The road is in motion, escalator, moving belt, catapults and trapdoors abound, dimension “Doorways in the Sand” accessed by intravenous crystals living in the flowing body, submarines in the blood stream off the Islets of Langerhans.

Another busy day of pulling things together. Eyes checked and applications dropped.

 

August 5

We will be on our way to Seattle for my job interview with NW Center in Queen Anne. I have been unemployed for less than a week, but I feel like I have done more than 3 weeks of work, networking, applying, visiting, and thinking about what I will do for a living. All is in flux and swirl. Life is a cauldron stirred, bubbling up who knows what in the coming days.

The interview went well. I definitely felt like I had them nodding and thinking about my responses and a few brief conversations and clarifications, some definite agreements.

Mary and I went to Uwajimaya. What a spectacle of culture and groceries.

August 6

I up early, alone, on a Friday morning, not at work. Strange, thinking about what to do, the future for this day wide open, nice!

August 7

Dreams:

1. In a small apartment watching TV at the kitchen table. Mary comes home from work.

2. Painting lists in watercolor.

The first time you read something, you should just read it to get the feel of it, the second time to know its subtler nature, and the third to discover what is hidden. How many works are made this way. That’s the kind of writing I would want to do. Subtlety is not hidden. What is hidden is hidden from the author, when he produces the work.

Let me sleep all night in a dream kitchen cooking something hidden and steamy. Put the lid on and simmer gently. No pot boiler for me.

August 8

I finished Lost in the Funhouse, by John Barth. He is way over my head, but I got some interesting thoughts out of it.

August 9

Another interview, so much easier than the ones I had with Head Start.

I am thinking about novels. Why do I have to work?

August 10

Dream:

Two friends, stupid men played by Jim Carrey, who come to truly love each other in a fraternal way, but are convinced by someone that each is taking advantage of the other. So they fight and separate and, finally, fatally shoot each other in the head. I was a witness to final scene but turned away hearing the pop of the pistols.

August 15

Another Dream:

I was writing a Disney Channel sitcom about a hotel ghost whose brother comes to stay.

Scene I

Finding out that the guest is the handyman’s brother because the ladder walks through the doorway and falls. When someone asks, “I wonder how he felt about his brother?” A vase falls off of a pedestal.

It all resolves with the brother and the ghost reconciling. the live brother had swindled his dead brother out of money, but somehow they work it out with a lot of zany breakage en route. Kind of like a funny episode of Ghost Whisperer (my odd little review here).

August 16

I have a trial class day in Seattle on Wednesday!

August 17

How can I be a preschool teacher and a writer and not write about preschool. I don’t know if I have enough space in my brain. Adult life is important to my sanity, but I am inspired by teaching. I am also not very good at writing for anyone but myself. I read slowly and am so easily distracted. If I do both what about the rest of my life? If all I do is teach and write is that living?

August 18

Queen Anne is a maze of tiny streets, but I found my way to the center. I am 35 minutes early listening to Dave Matthews in the car. I am not nervous. Though I did not sleep much last night.

August 20

Another Visit to Dreamtime:

I wore a white t shirt in the movie I wrote that won an award for best screenplay. They called my name in the crowded hall, “Mike!” I did not go up immediately because I did not recognize that as my name. Slowly I realized they were calling me up to receive the award.

I am trying to make sense of all this chaos of jobs and edges. Where will it all end up?

August 21

Dreaming Again:

I was in a car under a shelter, covering my head as bombs fell all around. Deafening.


Laundromat

The clothes and stuff are spinning.

I am losing and finding things

Nothing has dropped out completely,

Yet.

August 24

I spent today not worrying, just doing. Tomorrow I go and do much more.

August 25

Days are dragging. I have to wake myself up and get some things done before I go back to full time work. Everyday there are little things that need to be done that distract me, but also somehow remind me that my time is running out.

August 26

More Strange Dreams:

Dustin(my youngest son) was collecting all kinds of interesting junk to make presents out of (steel tubes, rods, old clear plastic containers) and dumping them in a pit.

There is a white and gray house of odd angles up on a cliff of dirt that crumbles into a pit. Vague buildings are around the rim. A woman sat behind a long table with a white table cloth looking off where I can’t see.

She smiles nervously and says, “Oh my! What an erection!” And, almost falls backward in shock and embarrassment.

August 30

One Last Dream:

I was hanging around waiting for a child to be picked up from daycare. I wanted to be helpful. Someone was watching me from behind a sliding mirror door. I could see me being watched and feel both nervous and oblivious at the same time.

Sometimes I feel this way when I am not dreaming.

Posted in All part of the process, change, Check this out, discovery and recovery, Dreamtime, Family, Fiction, hidden places, House and home, internal landscape, mindworks, my life, Other peoples words, paying attention, personal history, playing games, poetry, Questions and riddles, scenes on screens, summer, Teaching and Learning, Telling Stories, thinking in words, visions from the dark side, Wacky World, working world | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment