Hello,
Head’s not on straight.
Yuja Wang plays Tchaikovsky. A full house; a young house. The bow.
Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations. A healthy city replaces imports with products of local industry. And Kimmerer the sharing economy. The economy of the serviceberry preceded capitalism, and will succeed it.
N— photographs the worksheet, uploads it to a bot, presents to the bot it as an offering, asks it do the thing, saying, Here is my most precious gift, my attention. Later I call him out, the comment framed it as a gentle warning. But mostly want to let him know: the act was seen. He squirms, he reasons: “I only asked one question.” The Porter:
Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale.
Ought the sacrifice, the offering-up of the mental process, constitute a crime? Ought we maybe not so readily give up this process, maybe ought we guard it, charish it like an heirloom? Mustn’t mistake the parroting of information for thinking. If conflated, game over. Schools, organizations, communities, whole societies ought to come together to do more than name the patterns and hazards we’re witnessing. And more than dismantle and identify ideology when we hear it, ought to focus on educating ourselves and each other, inside and outside of schools, and hone methods of resisting the patterns which play into the hands of the parties seek to exploit the deaf and blind.
Ought to be more:
vigilant against distraction, aware, and;
sober-minded, data-critical, and;
have read deeply and widely. Reading’s a skill. Morelike, reading’s a practice, and—we are out of practice. Rusty. A reader is intentional, enters a text with focus and discipline. Reading ought to be taken with as much seriousness as one who commits to building the body at a gym. And it ought to be understood as being as vital to the health of not only the individual but also society.
Collage.
The first tulip spears, purple, sharp.
Feed the neighbour’s cat. The house has children living in it. Quiet. She drops in the dark, sideways into the carpet.
D— greets at the large front door of Church of the Redeemer, a squat church holding itself up against the towers: stone verses glasses. Shown the Yamaha grand, prepared and mic’d for Holy Week. Thirty minutes to learn the action, fill the space. Stumble through a Gonzalez prelude and Schubert intermezzo. The Song Without Words feels heavy, not light at all.
Finish report cards. Have written 30 report cards in my career. Will write 30 more, inshallah. The grade’s just a code by the way. Here’s the code: A 90-something doesn’t always mean, You’re smart. Most often it means, You’re good at this — and I like your personality. You follow the rules, you complete the assignment. 80-something says, I have no problem with how you’re doing things. You’re fine. Maybe try trying harder. But maybe not, who cares, you’re fine. 70-something means you’re showing up and you’re doing the work, or at least some of the work, and the work is ordinary and maybe kind of sloppy. You’re doing it but you don’t care. Do something about it, or don’t. Sometimes a 70-something can mean, You’re trying hard but you’re not meeting all expectations. You struggle to grasp the material, or the skills to communicate your grasp of it. 60-something is trouble. 60-something is, for people who care about these numbers, embarrassing. The thing is, most 60-somethings do not care about these numbers, and so they are not embarrassed. 50-something is a gift. 50-something ought to be a fail.
Medical tourism: men fly to Turkey for hair transplants. A cabin full of bandaged heads. A recovery room above the clouds.
Zazen inconsistent.
Walk to school into the wind.
G— holding the door again. Should nominate that boy for an award.
More collage. Ambient drone and the crisp, quiet sound of cutting paper.
Discuss the word ‘possess.’ To possess. To be possessed.
“Show me the rule where it says I gotta tuck in my shirt.” Show him the rule. “Fair enough, fair enough.”
Start Lord of the Flies unit. Start class with Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’: Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me. The task: scan the New Testament for the name ‘Beelzebub.’ “Sir, they spell it ‘Beelzebul, with a L.” “Same guy,” I say, unsure. They find one in Matthew, two in Mark. “In the glossary,” A— interjects, “Means ‘ruler of the demons.’ “Okay,” I say. What language: Hebrew? Aramaic? Words are messy. Ruler is Lord. Demons are pesky flies, dark and invisible, menacing. “Ruler of the demons. Lord of the flies.” A collective noun of applause.
Masked singer. A falsetto Ave Maria. Schubert’s version.
Falafel Tuesday. Two is too many. The kebab shop’s riotous with a collective noun of teens.
Class coverage. Heads on desks, phones in hand, bored, tortuously bored. Send them to the office for a uniform infraction, but mostly for giving them something to do. One boy returns forty minutes later. “Where did you go?” “Bathroom.” “For thirty seven minutes?” “Okay,” he says. “I’ll report this,” I say. “Okay,” he says.
The phone in his hand offers up an endless feed of masculine discontent. Are we being entertained to death?
Three poems on love. One by e.e. cummings, and by Phyllis Webb, by Margaret Atwood. A— gives a book report on Carl Safina’s ‘The View From Lazy Point.’ A— with scientist’s mind, careful and curious.
Chiropractor. Gao Gao the dog.
Dumplings and cucumber salad, house dressing.
Worked on fingering for the Prelude of Bach’s Suite in A Minor. Finicky work but enjoyable.
Finished Tim O’Brien’s The Things We Carried. Started Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
From the Dhammapada:
You have come out of the hollow
Into the clearing.
The clearing is empty.
Why do you rush back into the hollow?
Sad — off.
A walk in the sun with H—. Black coffee.
The hallway stench. “Smoke,” says F—. Says H—: “Sulfur.”
T—‘s birthday. Read a story by him this week of his escape from the war as a child. “We were five days in the mountains. Cousin almost bit by a snake. Each took turns carrying the big bag of food. Had to leave it behind when the soldiers appeared — they took it away, along with the guy carrying it. We continued on without food, mixing powdered milk with water from the river. My feet were swollen; I made a walking stick. The last mountain was the biggest, and here the soldiers caught up to us and shot at us. So we ran down the mountain as fast as we could, ran for our lives for the border.” T— runs hands through his hair. “Yeah, it was crazy. People here don’t understand, like.”
K’s cake for the neighbours, colleagues, kiddos. Coffee cake. Donut holes for C—‘s birthday. Season of birthdays.
Skipped zazen, yoga.
Grading senior papers. Report card week. Everyone gets 100. Everyone fails. Only A’s and F’s. The whole enterprise merits a report card.
In the halls. T—: “My cat doesn’t know he’s gonna lose his balls tomorrow. V—, dejected: “What about the wedding for our cats?”
A vape pen falls out of his pocket; he covers it with his shoe.
Pasta and salad. Ate poorly otherwise.
The railway loop with K, clockwise.
Chamomile tea with lemongrass.
The first tulips, maybe, from bulbs planted in fall.
Jukai.
Shuttle bus adventure. Bicycle in the shop again to replace a snapped gear shifter wire thing.
Cleaned the office, top to bottom.
Sunday scaries.
Tulips, can confirm.
The chocolate’s half off at your local billionaire’s bodega. The sun’s out but you still need a coat. The clearing is empty. Why do you rush back out the hollow? Maybe you ought to stay out of hollow.
Ask for help if you need it. You’ve got it.
~d