you just keep me hangin' on

i'm tired. i think i'm coming down with something. i've been surprisingly healthy in the past eight or ten months, however - i haven't been sick since the week i was really sick in the winter. i shouldn't be blogging. i wonder what percentage of publications on the internet start that way. i should be working to diminish the gothically supported and balanced piles of laundry and paperwork. i just can't figure out where to start and stop and get enough sleep to keep going. sometimes i think that two entire days spent awake and on speed would be enough to get me a little ahead. as the eight-year-old sage calvin said, "God put me on this earth for a purpose. right now, i am so behind i will never die."
i want to be so many right things. and yet there's always hovering around my shoulders the ecstatic whispers that i am loved no matter if i ever become those right things or not. i need most of all to remember that.

the real world

the biggest and best news of the day: i am MHS' newest English teacher! it has been sinking in only superficially in the six hours since they called me. in many ways i'm more nervous because now i know the countdown has begun to the beginning of the hardest year of my life. but i'm terminally thrilled. i can't believe i get to teach kids and talk with them about books. if i focus on my wonder at that fact, it keeps the only natural nervousness at bay.
i pulled up to my local 24-hour coffee joint full of ambition to get some lesson planning done, and had to kick myself for my response when i saw the crowd gathered outside. twenty slender shapes like so many oddly grown trees were planted in front of the entrance to the coffee shop, and i groaned. 'rotten kids,' i thought to myself as i sniffed marijuana and cigarette smoke. and then i had to laugh at my own silliness. 'now,' i said to myself, 'where is your confidence in even the most unmotivated student? where is your impulse to convince kids that they can find some part of what they're looking for in books? where is your desire for them to see themselves in what they read?' i squinted and the shapes resolved themselves into the guests at Gatsby's party, striking dangerously merry poses and smoking in painful elegance. the couple kissing in a darkened corner of the parking lot becomes the youthfully infatuated star-crossed lovers. the boys channeled Holden and Lane as they craned their necks for glimpses of the girls, and one very self-aware young man appeared more like Zooey the harder i looked. 'that's more like it,' i said to myself, and i went inside. i am still a work in progress in as many ways as there are to be worked on. but i am so, so excited.

saturday in the park

it's one of those days that makes you realize why everyone thinks California is a paradise. today, it certainly is. the sun has invited itself in at all entrances to the house and the breeze comes and goes at just the right temperature and tempo. i'm having a very pleasant day... i think it's because i've gotten so much done and haven't given in to the procrastination that makes me not like myself. but i'd better leave the blogging here if i'm going to continue being productive. have a beautiful saturday, world.

survival

i stepped on a worm today and he bled a little.
i'm well past the age of thinking that's entertainment, but i'm not past the age when stepping on one tiny worm brings me remorse and makes me reflect on all the lives contained within the cosmos. (is there an expiration date on that kind of response?) it was, for him, much more than an unpleasant moment, i'm sure. do worms' lives flash before their light-sensing organs in the moments before they skirt death? but until i saw him wriggling on the ground near my shoe, i had been looking up at the myriad sycamore trees that populate my neighborhood, and having a significant thought even for a human. i was reflecting on the fact that wind sounds differently blowing through sycamores, and that sycamores figure heavily in the story of Zacchaeus. some years earlier the sound of wind through olive trees had drawn me to consider that Jesus must certainly have heard such a sound, even on the night of his death. and i thought to myself, is this beautiful sound i am hearing now a sound that was close to Jesus' own heart?
and then i stepped on the worm. he frantically squirmed and i gasped before picking him up and dropping him in the soil niche between the grass and the pavement. he was injured, but still retained enough wormness and life to instinctively burrow down where he was safe from people whose heads are in the clouds. i think he will be okay.

let's stay together

hello blogs. i suppose i am back in the blog world. i thought 'we' were 'over' that, but apparently i am still johnny-come-lately and even my seven fish and my frog have their own blog, myspace account, and facebook profile. they just post discreetly, when i am not watching them.
i still live in Davis, but i'm moving; i'm still dating Andrew, but he is in the hills for the summer; i still love books and words, but soon they will be part of my job as an English teacher. big haps - it's odd that i'm going into a profession where i'll be managing over 100 vulnerable, impressionable people daily when i am barely five years older than they are and still in a tender phase of life myself. the real world doesn't wait for you to 'catch up,' but it also doesn't require that of you to keep on spinning. i think i'll take my time.

How long would you wait to become the person you always wanted to be? What bad habits did you intend to drop in the process, and how long would it take for you to become serious about losing them? What would inspire you to move faster towards whomever you had hoped you would be?
I have a Suspicious Lump. So far I have only told my boyfriend, and any thousands of people who might come across this spot in the interweb. In the seconds after I told him, the silence was loud with the sound of our thoughts and fears. I saw myself becoming pitiable, my hair falling out, my face swelling like a melon, my every action, word, or thought suddenly becoming mawkishly significant. In short, I saw the Lifetime movie version of What Could Happen.
I saw the selves I hoped I wouldn't still be by the time I approached death. The girl whose thank you cards arrive two months after the appreciated event. The girl who bails on you for whomever or whatever else she prefers at the moment. The girl who entertains mean thoughts yet pretends to be all nice, all the time. The girl who yells at her parents. The girl who makes excuses that are second cousins to lies. And then I saw the girl who would be too proud to, on the motivation of a cancer scare, endeavor to change all that because it might seem Too Obvious Or Trite. Now don't judge too harshly, for total honesty ought to be its own recommendation for mercy. This is still me, and I am far from a saint. But the pride is a disguise for the girl who is hoping that this is not the limit of her time to create something more wonderful than the last thing she did or was. Lump or no lump, my days must be different, because I only have time for one great thing.
In other news, my supervisor said something nice about me today. It's notable because of the way she does it: with no warning, with no indication of the inspiration, and with plenty of encouragement. "You know, you are going to be such a good teacher." Visible surprise registers on my face.

#12: just like riding a bike...

Funny how after six months, I've still got the barista routine down. After that long with little to no income, it's nice to see that my perspective has changed. Now I'm thankful for ANY WORK AT ALL. Never mind what time of day or night it is. Working 3 jobs so far is pretty awesome. I have plenty to do, and some of it is downright fun. I put in my time at Starbucks in service to others and efforts to be pleasant, then I go to the research company and hone my office and organizational skills as a secretary working with a project I am so excited about, and then I go to Kaplan and teach four charming kids how to ace the SAT while watching them learn more and more. It's not bad at all, and it'll be a decent amount of money too. Well what do you know. I like working. :)

see: Ecclesiastes

#11: sparrows and lilies...

I've just come home from a shopping trip to Safeway. The gas to drive there and back was carefully economized. The weekly insert in my mailbox was attentively read, pen-marked, and planned into my menus for the next several weeks or so. A list of meal permutations was meticulously composed and pinned to my bulletin board. And I now possess things in my refrigerator, freezer, and pantry that I have not had there for months.
This is not a post of complaint. This is much less about how tired I am of the challenge I face daily in resisting my compulsion to spend money, trying to find a job that will bring me enough of it to live on, and constantly worrying about the next unforeseen or careless expense. Instead, I am rejoicing in the fact that I have all manner of long-lasting foods from which to choose, resting full of promise in my kitchen. I have ketchup, a luxury for the penurious and condiment-deprived. I have one loaf of bread in the pantry, and another in the freezer, waiting for me to defrost its deliciousness months later and fully appreciate in some less affluent moment the true pleasure a piece of toast can afford. I absolutely do not mean to be flippant. Maybe this ode to semi-perishables qualifies as wry humor or wit. But I am telling the truth when I say I have longed for butter and cheese every time I've stepped into the square of light thrown on the floor by the open refrigerator only to see hardly anything illuminated by it.
If you think I lack perspective when I call my circumstances tight, then perhaps you are a better and more enlightened person than me. This week, I've come to terms with the notion that someone else will always feel his degree of awareness is more heightened than mine. I burst into tears yesterday when I realized that I was twenty-one years old, about to graduate from university with a degree in English literature, and I still didn't know everything. It sounds like a silly thing to allow to disappoint me. Everyone knows that nobody could ever know everything, much less have all their questions answered when they graduate from college. Where did all the jokes about uppity college kids come from if not from the humorous gap between the self-illusion of omniscience, and the truth of young peoples' sophomoric tendencies? But somewhere along the line I think we all conscripted to the myth that an education could satisfy us. It is so relieving to know that these four years are not the proving ground for wisdom, though they may be for brightness or intelligence. It is such a comfort to know that nobody, nobody else on earth knows everything either, and in that respect, we are all equal.
I know I am finished with the college experience because I am through with allowing people to constantly view and judge my opinions as acceptable or right. Along with the education comes the evaluation of one's opinions in accordance with the views of the establishment. And I have felt from the beginning as if it were not acceptable to believe what I do, as if I were of substandard intelligence, and therefore substandard everything else. 'How could anyone possibly retain beliefs of a certain strain after being educated?' Well, I am through with the arrogance of that question. I am a human being whose thoughts are valuable and carry some measure of truth in them. I am a creature made in the image of God and given a wondrously complex mind and body. I no longer need to feel as if I am a poor example of a human being.
The fact that I could buy groceries and not be constantly feeling guilty about the process is, I hope, evidence of this change in me. I want to be socially conscious without being miserable and unable to enjoy the life with which I've been blessed . I want to do honor to God's gifts to me by actually enjoying them and appreciating them, since that's what they're for. I don't just savor buying lactose-free milk because I feel a deep pity for those who don't even have water to drink. It would be limiting to only enjoy what one has because one is thankful not to be a have-not, and moreover, I think it would be wrong. Instead, I relish the purchase of milk I can drink because I love its cool sweetness. It is right to enjoy such a good thing when I am able to. God is not waiting for me to show him how aware and compassionate I am before I can enjoy what He allows me to do. To me, He is saying, "Why do you worry about what you will drink or eat, or what you will wear? Isn't your life more important than food, and your body more important than clothes? I know best what you need, and I know best what everyone else needs. You do not need to convince Me of the rightness or fitness of My own plan. You may now commence to be happy with the life I have given you, and be thankful in your joy. The rest is up to Me."
For the first time in months, I am content - not because I have enough to eat or a bed to sleep in, but because I can completely trust His wisdom to put me in the best possible place, and to direct me along a path shaped by factors He completely understands in His great goodness. Amen.

Matthew 6
"Education doesn't make you happy. Rather, it is the means by which you realize that you are happy." - Iris Murdoch