of all the things I am unclear of, unsure of in my life right now, here is one thing I know I'm doing right:
When I was 10, I wrote a letter for my 20 year old self. I had forgotten all about it until it arrived in the mail. It said "Are you still as lonely as I am now? Do you feel like no one understands you? If not, how did you get past this? What has changed?" By the time I turned 20 I felt supported, and it has only grown. On the other end of that ten year project, I doubt, for real, that I'll ever feel quite that ache again.
It has been a long time since I've seen you last. Weeks, months, years. You've had a hard time or you've been ecstatic. You've moved apartments or cities, graduated, worked hard. You have met or split with lovers who have moved you deeply. You have found or lost a job. You are filled with ideas and questions, shocking compliments on my writing, nostalgia for things we shared or I have never seen. You remember things that jog my memory, that make me cringe and laugh. We sit on a park bench, on a sofa, across a restaurant table, at a bar, on a subway, a museum, or we walk. We drink tea, touch feet or hands, embrace hello and goodbye, or exchange only e-mails. long ones. there is so much to say.
I am a junkie for this, lost in the articulation of what we know and are seeking. Each iteration of my language is more clear to me than for the last one. I find clarity through the variations in one-at-a-time encounters with this small army of good friends.
When love comes up, I say over and over:
you are in a relationship. plural.
we are, this is. I have said this for years to myself as much as others, and it is me at my wisest: we are caring for each other. tell yourself the story of you and I, then tell yourself all your stories, or try.
There are so many people in my life who aren't going anywhere, this is a privilege but not a guilt.
Some friends say, now "hey, you've been saying this for years, rachel, since we were kids, that every little love is as important as the big sexy ones, and you know, you're right. we are not really seeking any more than what we have."
(Every post from now through march is going to end the same way)
This love is centered in the north east, and that is very lucky.
Car rides, not airplanes. no counting time zones for calls.
of all the bad shit I still itch to flee from,
the stuff in the east to return to only to confront.
this is one thing for which I have absolutely no reason to run away.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Accepting Yearning
It is snowing in Portland.
Only a few inches, cold only dramatic to those not used to their winter coats.
Back home, the roads would be salted and we'd be on our way
But here, school is closed.
I can't help but thing they're doing it right here
Snow is a pause.
It is winter now.
My lettuce will have died.
I think of snow as quiet.
Not that there is less sound
but there is more motion and no more noise. more quiet.
But right now it is loud, I can hear the sideways wind
I stay at home, and try to be ecstatic at the lounging day in the place I am currently calling home
Today mom says something wise, when I ask if I can set up shop in her garage.
You are welcome to live as long as you like in my home, rachel, but if you want to set up things your way, you should find your own.
Where?
the things I like most in my life now:
riding to school,
bringing home cheap cabbage from the fruit market in my shoulder bag on the way home
Picking Parsley and Rosemary for pasta sauce from the front yard
Pouring boiled cornstarch (what they call gloo-glob) in to recycled tins, helping the young ones slather it on newspaper and paper bags.
Making spring rolls for potlucks
sitting on the shady grass of the park on a warm day
borrowing movies from the library and dropping them back off again.
There are markets and front yards children and recycling piles and lawns and potlucks many places.
There is no good reason I should settle here, and hardly an inch of desire.
So far from familiarity and so close in to a city.
Where should I go?
I have accepted the need for some wandering, but am skeptical of that seeking, the myth of a place that just-feels-right
craving opportunity that wants me, rather than me it
craving settling in. my place my mess. fantasies of canning and chickens alongside a studio I will not have to take down.
This week I am imagining a farmhouse, last month a little apartment,
Maybe I could see this uncertainty as exciting if I weren't trying quite so hard.
Now I am trying not second guessing.
just doing those things my gut says to do.
My gut says get out of here
all thoughts end in that
and, though petrified of not having a plan
soon enough I will
Only a few inches, cold only dramatic to those not used to their winter coats.
Back home, the roads would be salted and we'd be on our way
But here, school is closed.
I can't help but thing they're doing it right here
Snow is a pause.
It is winter now.
My lettuce will have died.
I think of snow as quiet.
Not that there is less sound
but there is more motion and no more noise. more quiet.
But right now it is loud, I can hear the sideways wind
I stay at home, and try to be ecstatic at the lounging day in the place I am currently calling home
Today mom says something wise, when I ask if I can set up shop in her garage.
You are welcome to live as long as you like in my home, rachel, but if you want to set up things your way, you should find your own.
Where?
the things I like most in my life now:
riding to school,
bringing home cheap cabbage from the fruit market in my shoulder bag on the way home
Picking Parsley and Rosemary for pasta sauce from the front yard
Pouring boiled cornstarch (what they call gloo-glob) in to recycled tins, helping the young ones slather it on newspaper and paper bags.
Making spring rolls for potlucks
sitting on the shady grass of the park on a warm day
borrowing movies from the library and dropping them back off again.
There are markets and front yards children and recycling piles and lawns and potlucks many places.
There is no good reason I should settle here, and hardly an inch of desire.
So far from familiarity and so close in to a city.
Where should I go?
I have accepted the need for some wandering, but am skeptical of that seeking, the myth of a place that just-feels-right
craving opportunity that wants me, rather than me it
craving settling in. my place my mess. fantasies of canning and chickens alongside a studio I will not have to take down.
This week I am imagining a farmhouse, last month a little apartment,
Maybe I could see this uncertainty as exciting if I weren't trying quite so hard.
Now I am trying not second guessing.
just doing those things my gut says to do.
My gut says get out of here
all thoughts end in that
and, though petrified of not having a plan
soon enough I will
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Another thing obvious, now felt for real
At one school today, a girl handed me a typed packet
Her writing, she asked me to read.
Frank, clear references to sexual abuse
more than once, more than one person
and also other hardships
but clear forgiveness.
Positivity
I love my family, she said.
She said she wrote it with her counselor.
I am not worried that she is not receiving support.
I am honored that she offered it to me to read.
At the other school we talk so much about connecting to kids, having a connection
no definition. I know and I do not know exactly what they mean.
I wrote her back a letter to say she writes beautifully and thank you.
Language as simple as 10 and as honest as 22.
She smiled.
Who am I to? But who is anyone to?
I wonder why she offered it, if it was so deliberate, if she likes me or thinks of me as a person, not just a robot in the front of the line.
They did their homework quietly, and I glazed over
wanted to cry with rage
A person, not an abstract person
did that
to
A Child, not an abstract child
That beautiful girl, big like I was, poised beyond her years
but full of attitude, seeking fairness, acting exactly her age.
How Dare....
How, can I discipline this girl when she is rude to me?
To make school a place where rudeness is denied, maybe, is to make school unreal.
And real language, real emotion, lies outside the wide hallways and back with that, and whoever those Hims are.
Compassion, sympathy,
Can I treat her like normal, like average, thriving, happy? and make school a real world where she is really okay?
Her writing, she asked me to read.
Frank, clear references to sexual abuse
more than once, more than one person
and also other hardships
but clear forgiveness.
Positivity
I love my family, she said.
She said she wrote it with her counselor.
I am not worried that she is not receiving support.
I am honored that she offered it to me to read.
At the other school we talk so much about connecting to kids, having a connection
no definition. I know and I do not know exactly what they mean.
I wrote her back a letter to say she writes beautifully and thank you.
Language as simple as 10 and as honest as 22.
She smiled.
Who am I to? But who is anyone to?
I wonder why she offered it, if it was so deliberate, if she likes me or thinks of me as a person, not just a robot in the front of the line.
They did their homework quietly, and I glazed over
wanted to cry with rage
A person, not an abstract person
did that
to
A Child, not an abstract child
That beautiful girl, big like I was, poised beyond her years
but full of attitude, seeking fairness, acting exactly her age.
How Dare....
How, can I discipline this girl when she is rude to me?
To make school a place where rudeness is denied, maybe, is to make school unreal.
And real language, real emotion, lies outside the wide hallways and back with that, and whoever those Hims are.
Compassion, sympathy,
Can I treat her like normal, like average, thriving, happy? and make school a real world where she is really okay?
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Body
I have been thinking about my intestines. They started aching again today. They had churned every day since before I got here, but stopped, two weeks ago, with antibiotics one doctor prescribed and another seemed to think were useless. Said anxiety was tying my stomach up in knots. oh lord, how humiliating, please don't call this Irritable Bowel Syndrome? it makes me feel old and silly, though the pamphlets sound just like me. Stomach-twisting anxiety onset around the age of 20, set off by stress and sugar but ultimately irratic. emotional but real. This is the second time in 10 years I choose to see a diagnosis as a viewpoint. I wish I knew enough about my body to know what to do with this rejection, I wish I had a doctor I could really really trust. My guts flared up with a phone call of scary ambiguous tests, sent from new york. must find new doctor here, ended up with two, one a specialist and one just-someone-general-to-next-time-call. I am assuredly without cervical cancer now, thank goodness, but I'm still not sure even what category of thing is wrong.
I am thinking about my belly. he grabs at it, and I am no longer ashamed. Is that comfort with other, or comfort with self? For years now, I worry, when I get old it will get bigger, I will be one of those inflating old women, not a fragile one whithering away. But for now, it is always the same: I work all the time, I lay in bed all day, I eat too much sugar, I renounce sugar, I drive everywhere, I bike everywhere, but always it stays the same. I am not one of those bodies that rapidly changes.
I am thinking about my identity- it stung when my supervisor said "you are clearly a person who has a lot of stories about themself". Why does that feel like an insult? It is definitely true. My birthday book page said "you are a person who identifies more with what you do than who you are." Across the country from all the things I've done, at a school with high regard to being, this feels like a flaw and feels hard.
I am thinking about my home- tuesday he will move out and I will put all my fabric in color order on my shelves. Nesting. I will organize all of my dry goods in the kitchen. I will put my drawings and tools in the basement. This is the last try, I think, of making it feel like I really live in this house.
I am thinking about my childhood, my freaked out strange analytical child-brain. Just like the children I see every day here, one could not imagine I would be how I am now, but in retrospect it looks inevitable. I am alarmed to be proud of my privileged education, but earnestly grateful for the educators and parents that left me not afraid to be analytical or to be creative. It is the 6 year old illustrating her word problems who, 22, chooses to teach art and math.
I am thinking about my city- nostalgia for memories I once felt so detached from, or even scorned. Ache for the walk across 65th, yearning for the cold pavement and the taxi (ew, really?) to 90th and park. The subway uptown. The bus across the park. Is it just because so many people I miss have returned there this year? Is it just because I can't go for the weekend? I wonder, a lot, what it will feel like to be back there three weeks from now.
I am thinking about my family. I feel not so disconnected from them when I am far away. Signing papers for legal matters I don't understand, and realizing yet another universal obvious: these people are all getting older, and there is no reason to believe I can't know them honestly, and that they wouldn't like me if I told the whole truth. I want(ed?) to see myself as a reject from inherited high society, but that does not make sense with how I aspire to other relationships. I do not believe in cutting ties. The story I should tell about myself, how I want to think of it, begins with those immigrants I know so little about, four generations back. The American dream, lived out through three generations, and me, steeped enough in it to not just take it for granted, but to be cynical of it. to see it as wrong. Meeting so many families, I start thinking about my identity shaping as deliberate shaping of my branch of the family tree. Rich-white-assimilated-jewish-liberal-american heritage, just in being alive I am taking that story someplace. I think about my friend with artist/educator parents. I think: perhaps I will have a daughter like Emma. Perhaps she will have friends like me.
I am thinking about my culture. There are many families like mine, there are parallels. I am part of something, a lot of things, a lot of stories. What a case of american individualism... only in a childhood, city, era like mine could I have believed there was nothing jewish about me. I saw it happen to my friends who moved far away, feeling Judaism through its absence. My best friend at either job is the only other jew I know here. Her mother has a haircut just like my mother's. We don't talk too much about religion, but we both want all the teenagers to sit down around the table together, and somewhere deep in our common aspirations for our work is that something I can't articulate (yet) that we both got from our families. This is not all good, this cultural heritage, but it is also not all bad. And more important, it is unavoidable. If I am struggling with being myself without my context, perhaps I am resisting those less deliberate parts of myself, the things I was born with, the things programmed in to me.
I am thinking about my country. Another obvious realization: the story of America did not end my junior year of high school. I can imagine how this year might be phrased in my history textbooks, and, like everbody it seems, I say 'yes, yes, oh wow, what will happen on tuesday? Do you think he will? Do you think we can?'
I am thinking about the planet. This is how I strive to think. I wish I had a better way than reading, but thats what keeps me going right now. It is fucked up how revved up I get by analysis of bad things to come. Dad's copy of 'Hot, Flat and Crowded' makes me scared but inspired. My gut has said, since I was very young, that something is very wrong. I am still seeking information that fits my alarmed disposition. I did a lot of that last year, in that last phase, and so it feels comforting to learn about big earth problems. This is slightly twisted, but maybe also useful.
On tuesday Kerry moves in to his own bedroom downstairs, and we elect a new president. Is a new era about to begin? I have asked this question many times in the past year of my own life, and the answer is always no. Rachel, you can't name a distinction between today and tomorrow, you can't put your fist down and say 'today it will be easy again.' or 'today I am ready and restless, today it will be hard.' the phases will bleed together, sadness and happiness will each bubble up and quiet down. I want to see my story as no different from THE story, and so the must be, there has to be, some real importance of the big question right now- who will win? This is important to the big picture, and I am wondering what effect it will right away have on me. There are a lot of big questions right now, I feel scared of the things I am realizing, they don't feel unusual enough. The yearn to synthesize is not knew, but the interest-pool has grown. I am struggling to keep up.
I am thinking about my belly. he grabs at it, and I am no longer ashamed. Is that comfort with other, or comfort with self? For years now, I worry, when I get old it will get bigger, I will be one of those inflating old women, not a fragile one whithering away. But for now, it is always the same: I work all the time, I lay in bed all day, I eat too much sugar, I renounce sugar, I drive everywhere, I bike everywhere, but always it stays the same. I am not one of those bodies that rapidly changes.
I am thinking about my identity- it stung when my supervisor said "you are clearly a person who has a lot of stories about themself". Why does that feel like an insult? It is definitely true. My birthday book page said "you are a person who identifies more with what you do than who you are." Across the country from all the things I've done, at a school with high regard to being, this feels like a flaw and feels hard.
I am thinking about my home- tuesday he will move out and I will put all my fabric in color order on my shelves. Nesting. I will organize all of my dry goods in the kitchen. I will put my drawings and tools in the basement. This is the last try, I think, of making it feel like I really live in this house.
I am thinking about my childhood, my freaked out strange analytical child-brain. Just like the children I see every day here, one could not imagine I would be how I am now, but in retrospect it looks inevitable. I am alarmed to be proud of my privileged education, but earnestly grateful for the educators and parents that left me not afraid to be analytical or to be creative. It is the 6 year old illustrating her word problems who, 22, chooses to teach art and math.
I am thinking about my city- nostalgia for memories I once felt so detached from, or even scorned. Ache for the walk across 65th, yearning for the cold pavement and the taxi (ew, really?) to 90th and park. The subway uptown. The bus across the park. Is it just because so many people I miss have returned there this year? Is it just because I can't go for the weekend? I wonder, a lot, what it will feel like to be back there three weeks from now.
I am thinking about my family. I feel not so disconnected from them when I am far away. Signing papers for legal matters I don't understand, and realizing yet another universal obvious: these people are all getting older, and there is no reason to believe I can't know them honestly, and that they wouldn't like me if I told the whole truth. I want(ed?) to see myself as a reject from inherited high society, but that does not make sense with how I aspire to other relationships. I do not believe in cutting ties. The story I should tell about myself, how I want to think of it, begins with those immigrants I know so little about, four generations back. The American dream, lived out through three generations, and me, steeped enough in it to not just take it for granted, but to be cynical of it. to see it as wrong. Meeting so many families, I start thinking about my identity shaping as deliberate shaping of my branch of the family tree. Rich-white-assimilated-jewish-liberal-american heritage, just in being alive I am taking that story someplace. I think about my friend with artist/educator parents. I think: perhaps I will have a daughter like Emma. Perhaps she will have friends like me.
I am thinking about my culture. There are many families like mine, there are parallels. I am part of something, a lot of things, a lot of stories. What a case of american individualism... only in a childhood, city, era like mine could I have believed there was nothing jewish about me. I saw it happen to my friends who moved far away, feeling Judaism through its absence. My best friend at either job is the only other jew I know here. Her mother has a haircut just like my mother's. We don't talk too much about religion, but we both want all the teenagers to sit down around the table together, and somewhere deep in our common aspirations for our work is that something I can't articulate (yet) that we both got from our families. This is not all good, this cultural heritage, but it is also not all bad. And more important, it is unavoidable. If I am struggling with being myself without my context, perhaps I am resisting those less deliberate parts of myself, the things I was born with, the things programmed in to me.
I am thinking about my country. Another obvious realization: the story of America did not end my junior year of high school. I can imagine how this year might be phrased in my history textbooks, and, like everbody it seems, I say 'yes, yes, oh wow, what will happen on tuesday? Do you think he will? Do you think we can?'
I am thinking about the planet. This is how I strive to think. I wish I had a better way than reading, but thats what keeps me going right now. It is fucked up how revved up I get by analysis of bad things to come. Dad's copy of 'Hot, Flat and Crowded' makes me scared but inspired. My gut has said, since I was very young, that something is very wrong. I am still seeking information that fits my alarmed disposition. I did a lot of that last year, in that last phase, and so it feels comforting to learn about big earth problems. This is slightly twisted, but maybe also useful.
On tuesday Kerry moves in to his own bedroom downstairs, and we elect a new president. Is a new era about to begin? I have asked this question many times in the past year of my own life, and the answer is always no. Rachel, you can't name a distinction between today and tomorrow, you can't put your fist down and say 'today it will be easy again.' or 'today I am ready and restless, today it will be hard.' the phases will bleed together, sadness and happiness will each bubble up and quiet down. I want to see my story as no different from THE story, and so the must be, there has to be, some real importance of the big question right now- who will win? This is important to the big picture, and I am wondering what effect it will right away have on me. There are a lot of big questions right now, I feel scared of the things I am realizing, they don't feel unusual enough. The yearn to synthesize is not knew, but the interest-pool has grown. I am struggling to keep up.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
automobile does not equal autonomy
I give up. I have given-
Yes, you may, please, with your money, with our privilege
Please, thank you, I know it will bring you joy to do so.
I know you can afford to do so.
the air, the atmosphere I am not thinking of right now.
I know I will be so much happier with access to my car.
oh, Pico, the thought of having you-
memories of your insides, clear like that cliche of longing for lover's bodies.
The pink plastic ring in the glove compartment
the pile of photographs in the pocket of the left back seat
The smudge of yellow paint on the steering wheel
The dried dirty puddle near the driver's side door.
As I fell asleep last night I thought about all the places we could go together.
Any weekend, to the coast or the mountains.
Any piece of furniture I see on the side of the road.
Any show I want to go to, any friends house, even far away.
To the redwoods, to san francisco, to canada, to home.
yes, I can pack my things inside of you and I can put myself anywhere
some time, whenever it is, I will drive you back across the country.
I will not gasp for 6 hours as I leap from old-life-to-new-life
but have the slow transition home, like I had thought I needed all along.
Why did I leave you at home, Pico?
I know I knew it would be hard.
I was scared to leave, scared to drive you so far.
Before I bought the plane ticket, I thought:
what if I fall asleep and crash and die?
I thought I wouldn't need you- I would bring only the perfect things with me here
and in this new life, across the country, I would be the perfect, ethical person.
and I would be content.
Everything I thought I wanted, turned on its head once I arrived here.
Yearning and homesickess for everything I Knew Was Not For Me.
I do not know at all how those longings will change, or how I will address them in the upcoming months. Any of the major choices I am making right now, I might or might not change.
You will be here in 2 to 3 weeks, Pico. It is a sad state of living here how much easier life will be. This is not the kind of change I want to be in the world, but I am not exempt from any of those modern longings.
Whether or not you come here, I am part of the problems
as well as the solutions
I am not giving in, I am already giving
I am already doing
I cannot not do.
Yes, you may, please, with your money, with our privilege
Please, thank you, I know it will bring you joy to do so.
I know you can afford to do so.
the air, the atmosphere I am not thinking of right now.
I know I will be so much happier with access to my car.
oh, Pico, the thought of having you-
memories of your insides, clear like that cliche of longing for lover's bodies.
The pink plastic ring in the glove compartment
the pile of photographs in the pocket of the left back seat
The smudge of yellow paint on the steering wheel
The dried dirty puddle near the driver's side door.
As I fell asleep last night I thought about all the places we could go together.
Any weekend, to the coast or the mountains.
Any piece of furniture I see on the side of the road.
Any show I want to go to, any friends house, even far away.
To the redwoods, to san francisco, to canada, to home.
yes, I can pack my things inside of you and I can put myself anywhere
some time, whenever it is, I will drive you back across the country.
I will not gasp for 6 hours as I leap from old-life-to-new-life
but have the slow transition home, like I had thought I needed all along.
Why did I leave you at home, Pico?
I know I knew it would be hard.
I was scared to leave, scared to drive you so far.
Before I bought the plane ticket, I thought:
what if I fall asleep and crash and die?
I thought I wouldn't need you- I would bring only the perfect things with me here
and in this new life, across the country, I would be the perfect, ethical person.
and I would be content.
Everything I thought I wanted, turned on its head once I arrived here.
Yearning and homesickess for everything I Knew Was Not For Me.
I do not know at all how those longings will change, or how I will address them in the upcoming months. Any of the major choices I am making right now, I might or might not change.
You will be here in 2 to 3 weeks, Pico. It is a sad state of living here how much easier life will be. This is not the kind of change I want to be in the world, but I am not exempt from any of those modern longings.
Whether or not you come here, I am part of the problems
as well as the solutions
I am not giving in, I am already giving
I am already doing
I cannot not do.
Monday, October 13, 2008
These Two Schools
I work at two schools.
One is called "Free", but the other one costs no money
Twice a week, I ride between them. 15 minutes, tops.
but I doubt a single child from each has ever met the other.
One: 53 white kids, 10 staff, many loving parents. the lack of academic expectations frustrates me,
my prep-school self feels proud, and this makes me afraid.
I laugh on the phone to friends and relatives: 'I am learning that just because its progressive doesn't mean I agree with it'.
But as I learn these young people, I care less and less about their math skills, and more and more about their happiness. I still worry, however, what they are loosing by forgoing the drudgery of conventional education.
Two: 80 or so elementary school students burst through the doors of the theater/cafeteria,
the rest of them are outside and on their way home.
I serve them on styrofoam trays: gross cheesy white bread, apples white with wax coating, lettuce they say no to, chocolate milk, ranch dressing. Some days it is my job to count just how many of them rush by boisterously- to ensure 1-meal-per-child, for The State.
I take my dozen 10 year olds to do their homework, and then we play improv games for an hour- they are eager but unfocused, inattentive, disrespectful, kind to me but very mean to one another. They are filled with irks I wish I could let the squirm out and talk through, but when I try they get crazy, and so I exercise control as best I can (which is poorly) and I know the kid I sent to my supervisor was also picked on, but he ran so much and called so many kids stupid. Maybe he is just bigger and louder than the others.
Straight-line-no-talking back to the cafeteria and I teach another dozen how to make a recycled art project with just-enough-freedom-for-age-appropriate-creativity. no more no less. It is so satisfying to prepare and share a lesson. I know the kids at One would like this too, but I do not have it in me to spend hours prepping projects that I have no guarantee they will do. I wonder if the other staff is disappointed in me when I let them stray from the plan and my demo, let them make things that are awkward and lumpy and gluey and absent-minded and unfinished. The children seem happy. I should remember to complement them more on what they make.
At One, when there is conflict or sadness, we talk and talk. I am learning to listen to young people, and they are learning to share and process, and not be afraid to cry. Life is hard for all people big and little, and maybe it is not easier when you have ample time to feel your feelings. no straight quiet lines to march down the hall and loose yourself in, no validation from check marks and gold stars.
Two: I want to apply this listening, I imagine the children crying for it. in moments of unstructured time there are bouts of such frustration, I want to talk with them, but there is not time. And the others would go wild in my absence. They tattle on each other, look to me for protection, and I don't know how to do anything about it while class must continue. I don't want to punish without knowing details, but I know I will learn.
Little faces grasping the hands of bigger faces that look like theirs. Endless women answering to mamamamamamamama from their lolling teenager or collapsed tiny ball of person on the floor. Parents from One tell me of their struggles and parents from Two politely shake my hand. I am filing away all of this parenting, it is a petrifying thought that one day I might well use what I am learning for a little one that right now I am trying very hard not to brew within me.
The weeks feel too Real Life all of the sudden: job. weekend. boyfriend. families everywhere. I am a person with a family. I think about my childhood, my loving parents making big body tracing drawings in the hall and word problems at restaurants. my clean clothing, my bedroom, my home cooked meals. It also leaves me thinking about my future, envisioning it with a certainty that feels fake, or incorrect. Makes me want the next step (backwards? outwards?) to be seeking time and space for artwork, searching through my own ideas and materials like a navel-gazing, looser-hip, idealist privileged white girl from new york city. which is what I am right now. I am trying to be a collected educator, but it feels premature.
One is called "Free", but the other one costs no money
Twice a week, I ride between them. 15 minutes, tops.
but I doubt a single child from each has ever met the other.
One: 53 white kids, 10 staff, many loving parents. the lack of academic expectations frustrates me,
my prep-school self feels proud, and this makes me afraid.
I laugh on the phone to friends and relatives: 'I am learning that just because its progressive doesn't mean I agree with it'.
But as I learn these young people, I care less and less about their math skills, and more and more about their happiness. I still worry, however, what they are loosing by forgoing the drudgery of conventional education.
Two: 80 or so elementary school students burst through the doors of the theater/cafeteria,
the rest of them are outside and on their way home.
I serve them on styrofoam trays: gross cheesy white bread, apples white with wax coating, lettuce they say no to, chocolate milk, ranch dressing. Some days it is my job to count just how many of them rush by boisterously- to ensure 1-meal-per-child, for The State.
I take my dozen 10 year olds to do their homework, and then we play improv games for an hour- they are eager but unfocused, inattentive, disrespectful, kind to me but very mean to one another. They are filled with irks I wish I could let the squirm out and talk through, but when I try they get crazy, and so I exercise control as best I can (which is poorly) and I know the kid I sent to my supervisor was also picked on, but he ran so much and called so many kids stupid. Maybe he is just bigger and louder than the others.
Straight-line-no-talking back to the cafeteria and I teach another dozen how to make a recycled art project with just-enough-freedom-for-age-appropriate-creativity. no more no less. It is so satisfying to prepare and share a lesson. I know the kids at One would like this too, but I do not have it in me to spend hours prepping projects that I have no guarantee they will do. I wonder if the other staff is disappointed in me when I let them stray from the plan and my demo, let them make things that are awkward and lumpy and gluey and absent-minded and unfinished. The children seem happy. I should remember to complement them more on what they make.
At One, when there is conflict or sadness, we talk and talk. I am learning to listen to young people, and they are learning to share and process, and not be afraid to cry. Life is hard for all people big and little, and maybe it is not easier when you have ample time to feel your feelings. no straight quiet lines to march down the hall and loose yourself in, no validation from check marks and gold stars.
Two: I want to apply this listening, I imagine the children crying for it. in moments of unstructured time there are bouts of such frustration, I want to talk with them, but there is not time. And the others would go wild in my absence. They tattle on each other, look to me for protection, and I don't know how to do anything about it while class must continue. I don't want to punish without knowing details, but I know I will learn.
Little faces grasping the hands of bigger faces that look like theirs. Endless women answering to mamamamamamamama from their lolling teenager or collapsed tiny ball of person on the floor. Parents from One tell me of their struggles and parents from Two politely shake my hand. I am filing away all of this parenting, it is a petrifying thought that one day I might well use what I am learning for a little one that right now I am trying very hard not to brew within me.
The weeks feel too Real Life all of the sudden: job. weekend. boyfriend. families everywhere. I am a person with a family. I think about my childhood, my loving parents making big body tracing drawings in the hall and word problems at restaurants. my clean clothing, my bedroom, my home cooked meals. It also leaves me thinking about my future, envisioning it with a certainty that feels fake, or incorrect. Makes me want the next step (backwards? outwards?) to be seeking time and space for artwork, searching through my own ideas and materials like a navel-gazing, looser-hip, idealist privileged white girl from new york city. which is what I am right now. I am trying to be a collected educator, but it feels premature.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
This New Life, This Month
It has been a tough month.
I am lucky to call it that. In the last month I have flown across the country, picked up at the airport by the principal of my new school and taken to the home where a school family would be hosting me. I painted my room my favorite color- much like the one on this blog, and moved in the eight boxes of my favorite things that I had shipped from home. A week and a half of intensive training, lots and lots of talking, and the school year begins. I can teach what I want, move through the school as I want- as do the 50-odd (and I do mean odd) young ones, some about to graduate and some still wetting their pants. I set my own hours and daily agenda, where I am supported and checked-in on and communicated with as much as I could dream of, I am paid almost enough to cover weekly expenses. With school and all the settling in, there is hardly time to explore this beautiful city, to see the half-dozen friends I have here, or to get back to the friends-of-friends who continue to call to welcome me. I apply for one other job to supplement my tiny stipend and I get it! Teaching art and theater after school, this time to all 4th and 5th graders, with me in the front of the room and them having to listen, to walk behind me between classrooms in straight lines, but here too I design my own curriculum (I have not begun yet) and because it is after school and there is no test to take, I am allowed to define my own measures of success.
many people have done these things before:
moved far away from their family
worked a job they wished delighted them, but stresses them out
tried to be a good teacher
given up their automobile
graduated from college
worried that wanting to make art would make them irrelevant
been followed by a partner whose commitment to them scares them, but to whom they feel the same.
Yearned to feel firmly routed, but felt aimless.
built a life, a reality, based on their ideals.
But all of these things are new to me, and they are what I am doing. I have been here one month. Now, I am going to the airport to pick up Kerry, for him to start his new life here and for me, essentially to start over with him. This time, I will articulate what I am learning as I learn it, and I believe this will make me happier, I have realized now that it will be hard.
I am lucky to call it that. In the last month I have flown across the country, picked up at the airport by the principal of my new school and taken to the home where a school family would be hosting me. I painted my room my favorite color- much like the one on this blog, and moved in the eight boxes of my favorite things that I had shipped from home. A week and a half of intensive training, lots and lots of talking, and the school year begins. I can teach what I want, move through the school as I want- as do the 50-odd (and I do mean odd) young ones, some about to graduate and some still wetting their pants. I set my own hours and daily agenda, where I am supported and checked-in on and communicated with as much as I could dream of, I am paid almost enough to cover weekly expenses. With school and all the settling in, there is hardly time to explore this beautiful city, to see the half-dozen friends I have here, or to get back to the friends-of-friends who continue to call to welcome me. I apply for one other job to supplement my tiny stipend and I get it! Teaching art and theater after school, this time to all 4th and 5th graders, with me in the front of the room and them having to listen, to walk behind me between classrooms in straight lines, but here too I design my own curriculum (I have not begun yet) and because it is after school and there is no test to take, I am allowed to define my own measures of success.
many people have done these things before:
moved far away from their family
worked a job they wished delighted them, but stresses them out
tried to be a good teacher
given up their automobile
graduated from college
worried that wanting to make art would make them irrelevant
been followed by a partner whose commitment to them scares them, but to whom they feel the same.
Yearned to feel firmly routed, but felt aimless.
built a life, a reality, based on their ideals.
But all of these things are new to me, and they are what I am doing. I have been here one month. Now, I am going to the airport to pick up Kerry, for him to start his new life here and for me, essentially to start over with him. This time, I will articulate what I am learning as I learn it, and I believe this will make me happier, I have realized now that it will be hard.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
