The new coffee bean grinder whirrs, spews ground beans into a little metal cup.
Charade: the government-mandated literacy test.
They decorate the classroom, fill the whiteboards with colour and well-wishes for M—‘s birthday: tradition.
Rain on campus. Old grey stones, black trees, robins, starlings. A pair of conversant cardinals. The wet-black sculpture, forged in fondería, is a story of contradictions: rough and smooth, curved and straight. The eyes meet through it. The pianist in the great hall: scales, the Waldstein sonata.
The pair stoned and stumbling on the train. On pity and compassion and disgust. Plato: Everyone’s fighting a hard battle, and are deserving of our kindness.
In the food hall, students with plates of fries and salad. They chat and prod at phones, edit papers, generate slide decks. In the washroom, a gangly prof enters the bathroom, places his phone atop the urinal. On a phone, pissing.
The kids perform their play at the old theatre. The green room’s warm. E— snaps photos with an antique pocket-sized digital camera. An antique digital camera. Makeup in the bright-lit mirrors, focused eyes. Pizza boxes. R—: “Who wants coffee?” A blown fuse. A couple formed. The voices warmed. Merde, merde, merde! Broken lighting cues, panic, a fix. The broken bed, a fix. K’s gift of chocolate and sweet words. After hours in the green room with the adjudicator and the Institution: festival history and lore, past teachers. “There were the kids from Forest Hill — this was the 70s, mind —getting fried, destroying a bathroom. The parents paying the damages.” With L— driving the rental van home in the early morning. What does L— think of this adjudicator? “Butter.”
Westbound in the early morning for dokusan. Roncesvalles.
A fire downtown, men scramble. The cat in the window in the black smoke — then the arm of a firefighter scooping it up, returning it to its owner on the sidewalk below, a cat in her other arm. This fire claims a human life.
Thomson’s ’The West Wind.’ Bloodred base. Three trunks, one solid, one curved, another barely there, hold fast against the wind. Black hills on the opposite shore, black needles. Stones in reds and blacks and greens. Kroetsch: “But damn you, Tom Thomson, and damn your jackpines. They are so beautiful.”
Bloodwork.
M— paints, earbuds in, a phone propped up against the canvas. She’s watching Suits. “I get bored.” On a phone, painting.
T— delivers a lesson on poetry, on words as signposts and point of view, on the infinitude of the person and the universe — on the self as universe. On the bird and the stone and the wider view. On love in the largest sense of the word.
The moon again, cold and clear, suspended above quiet roofs. The streets are quiet, too. A river runs under them, you can hear it.
Class quiz: Together, name as many of the countries as able in 15 minutes. Hit 175, get a pizza party. A few weeks ago they got 82. The next week, 103. Then 142. Today a new record: 145 (with help from Ms W—).
The bicycle still sounding crunchy after getting rear-ended by an e-bike. The rider had been scrolling through reels on his phone. On a phone, cycling.
Cold lamp caught in the maple boughs. The first blood-red buds: little tongues. Got to keep feeding the roots.
A journalist wreathed in flame, burned black, silent — a bomb dropped in the name of defence, of God. Terrorists and ‘soldiers of light’: monsters all. Condemnable all. May the women and children and elderly and innocent who find themselves the targets and senseless violence be guarded and come to know peace.
Not defence. Not God.
Play: the first measures of the Sarabande from Bach’s English Suite BWV807.
Read: Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, a collection of interrelated short stories set in and after the Vietnam war. A deft hand: this is clean, arresting, gut-wrenching writing.
Comic relief. In the tense silence of the climax of a play, a special needs student rips a terrific fart. The students in the audience — bless them — fight for their life to hold back tears. The actor cracks, too. Only the offender isn’t laughing. He’s watching the drama unfold.
Grateful for this job. For security of employment, for the ability to hang with young people and talk about language and craft, to laugh with them. Despite the dire state of public education, I do not take the position for granted. It gives and gives.
What we share in common transcends the pithy, the jingoistic. There is no Other. If they suffer, we suffer. If they prosper, we prosper. Pierce the veneer. Call out the selfish and cruel. Insist on the truth. The heart is the head and the head is the heart. Stay calm, stay calm.
d
Field recording: ‘Finca’ (March 2025)
I needed this today. Merci Eric