long time no blog

As usual, I haven't blogged for quite some time. So, I thought I'd make an appearance.

Last week, Tom and I went to Kansas to visit my parents. It was a nice visit. We basically did nothing the whole time--and it was a good thing. After the last few months of craziness, we were ready for the quiet streets, Sonic runs, lazing by the lake and strawberry rhubarb pie.

The one thing about this trip is the fact that I sort of was thrust into the past at times. I ran into my old music teacher on the second day of our visit. It was weird, since I hadn't spoken to him since I graduated from high school (ten years ago!). I didn't even recognize him at first. He had gone completely gray and had a serious drawl I don't remember him having back when I was in school. I told Tom later that I couldn't believe he had such a strong hold on me then. I was really involved with music and theater, and he used my love for it to his advantage. He pit me against another girl quite often, and me being the sensitive teenager took a lot of it to heart. He even tried it on me when I saw him last week. He mentioned her and how she was doing dinner theater in Wichita. Which is better than I remember hearing about her in the past. It didn't really phase me, however. I mean, I live in New York. I also saw my Kindergarten teacher and the grandmother of two of the kids I babysat when I was younger.

I saw a few old friends. Other than the beautiful Princess Di (who isn't really an 'old' friend, since we keep up with each others' lives--we had a nice talk one evening on my mom's front porch), I didn't get a real picture of what their lives were like. Everyone seemed to be having babies! And they just seemed in a different place entirely. One or two didn't even seem to want to talk to me, even though in high school we spent hours at a time together. It really bothered me--still does somewhat. Not that I expected a huge welcome, but a few moments of time wouldn't have hurt.

What can you do? Nothing, I expect.

But we're back now. School starts again next week. Both of us are off till Tuesday. We've done some sightseeing and hanging out and sleeping in. (The other day we went to two museums--one about Asian Biblical art and the other was about sex. The sex one was just ridiculous. Not worth the 14 bucks. Last night we sat with a friend on a bench near the Park and noticed a trash can was smoking. Our friend, Lady L, called 311 (different from 911) and soon a little police mobile and a fire truck came and put it out.) It's been a good break. Too short, as usual.

fireworks

For the first time in the five years we have lived in the Greatest City in the World, Tom and I braved the crowd and stood by the East River to watch the Macy's fireworks.

Not that we hadn't seen them before. In other years we used to climb to the roof of Menno House. After we moved away from that realm, we were a little anti-fireworks, so we went to an empty bar (I had a stiff margarita) and watched them on TV. What was funny about that is we were close enough to hear the boom and crackle of said fireworks. The next year we sat far away in Central Park on a very sticky night. Our friend, Lady L met us there, and she suddenly wanted to go see, so we hurried to the subway--only to sit and wait for the train for an extraoridinary amount of time. By the time we surfaced, we saw everyone leaving.

This year we stood on the FDR highway for about two hours with some other friends of ours: Master Zanderoc and Mistress Szenga. They'd decided that since they were probably moving back to that mythical land called California within the next year, it was time to see them up close. And we tagged along.

The fireworks were pretty good. Worth the foot-hurting wait, though I was a bit tired of them by the end. Come on, come on, I thought, get to the grand finale already. There were these cool ones that kind of floated and dove over the water. I don't understand fireworks already, but that seemed pretty amazing.

I am glad we went, though sometimes I feel the hokey ones I went to in the past were better in some way. Or at least the anticipation was greater. I guess that comes from being a kid. One of the first Fourths I remember was a visit with an uncle's fiancee's family. I basically remember her little brothers or cousins lighting these worm-like things that writhed and struggled on the patio. Another memorable Fourth was when some high school friends and I climbed into a giant pre-SUV and headed for the fireworks in Peabody. Somehow we got lost and wandered the back roads for a long long time. I remember seeing them from a distance. We never actually made it to Peabody. A final memory (at least for this blog) was one summer between my Sophomore/Junior year of college. A bunch of us climbed the Hill behind campus and watched the various firework shows in the Shenandoah Valley.

Time has told me...You're a rare rare find...A troubled cure...For a troubled mind.

I'm in a weird mood today. I feel really awake for the first time in a week, and as I sat waiting for the water to boil, everything seemed clearer, sharper than usual.




Part of this may be one or all of three things:

I've finally had a decent night's sleep

I finally am wearing my contacts after being forced into glasses from all the pollen

I'm listening to Nick Drake--who can't feel weird listening to his voice?

Or it may be this:

Yesterday I filed a report of plagiarism on one of my students who is in my College English I. She had taken not one, but two essays off the internet. I was immediately suspicious by the perfection of grammar and semi-colons--not to mention the voice. When you've read enough work by second language students, there's a rhythm they all have. Even if it's understandable--even if it's pretty good, there is that tenor only such students have.

I saw her in the learning center and confronted her in my "office"--otherwise known as a cubicle. She's a second language student, and though her writing (when unplagiarized--which I know from her exam work) is passable, she doesn't really understand English, if that makes any sense--so she didn't really understand what I said. She kept saying, Can I write it another time? I said no, she would lose 200 points from her final grade. She asked: Will I fail? Maybe, I said. She didn't really care, it seemed, about the gravity of the offence--she only cared if she would pass the class.

The crazy thing about this, is I handed out a four-page treatise on plagiarism in on Wednesday. And I explained everything in it. I asked her if she'd read it--she didn't even know what I was talking about.

I don't think the treatise meant much to a lot of my students. I gave examples of plagiarism where people modified the work ever so slightly. Many of them said: But it's different! One of my students said, If I take an entire essay off the internet but make sure you know who wrote it, would you consider it plagiarism?

Or it may be this:

I stopped at a local drugstore before I got on the train last night. As I walked through the door, someone behind me said, Miss, miss! I turned. A middle aged man with gray-blond hair held out a folded scrap of paper. Here miss, he said, handing the paper to me. I thought it was something I'd dropped, so I took it and put it in my pocket. When I had a chance to look at it, it said Call Me. Gene. And had a phone number.

I'm not quite sure why a man would think a woman would actually call, but I was propositioned a few weeks back by a man near my school, so stranger things can happen. Once again, I was heading home. This guy was walking towards me with a bag of Chinese food in hand. Hi, he said. Hi, I said. I actually stopped, because he was South Asian and several of the male teachers are from that region, so I thought this guy might be one of them. And somehow he recognized me.

Do I know you? I said, once I realized he wasn't one of the teachers.

Maybe, he said.

I got uncomfortable and said, Well, I need to go.

Do you want to hook up? he said. I'm over at the Sheraton right here, so if you want to come up...

He said he was at the Sheraton like he was staying the Ritz or something.

Ah, no, I said, walking away.

It's not like I was wearing anything that would scream sexy to him, especially with all the skinny minis in couchie skirts around him. Maybe my blouse was open too far. Who knows? Last night I was wearing very boring dress pants and a blazer. What about me is attractive to middle aged men? Well, the proposition guy was probably 35ish...

ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

I've loved this poem since I first read it in college. I think it was in Omar Eby's 19th Century Fiction class. I even memorized it, though I couldn't recite it now for the life of me.

It's been a very long time since I've graced this site--more than likely the only audience is my family--family does that sort of thing. A lot has happened, though, not really interesting to blog about. I've been crazy busy with teaching. I've taken on two ESL classes, a Business Communication class and College English I. It's been nice having the more "college-like" classes. I love ESL, but it is nice to do something new. And, it strengthens my resume! So, I've come upon the usual student-teacher conflicts: students have offered me cakes for passing the class, have shown up with the assignments unfinished and are shocked when I deduct their points, a student came to me last week and talked about taking care of her children and how she'll be late to class a lot (which I understand) and maybe she won't write the essays...I had to set her right on that one! But there are good things, too. Students are constantly giving me fruit and hugs; students who were in my classes last semester and aren't this semester bemoan the fact that I'm not their teacher...so it's good and bad and everything in between.

I'm not sure where this blog is going, or how Ozymandias has anything to do with my teaching life. I tried to teach it to my College English students. I think they just thought I was looney, since most of them are former ESL students. I had more sucess with an Edward P. Jones short story, "The First Day." I think they really could identify with the single mom and her (possibly illegitimate) daughter. I'm teaching argumentative essays the next couple of weeks, and I'm going to attempt to show them how it's done not only in writing but in film. I may be showing An Inconvenient Truth next week--if I can get my act together. I've been swimming around on the internet looking for lesson plans (and there are tons), but all of them are science oriented, not studying how Al Gore sets up his argument. (If anyone out there is reading this and knows of something related, please tell me!)

I guess I just have an affection for old Ozy. It's nice to know that the things that are so important now just aren't so important in the grand scheme. It takes off the stress, you know?

kosher coke

Tom discovered something that is hard to find, even in New York: kosher Coca-Cola. It has sugar in it (no fructose whatever it's called), for observant Jews during Passover. He found it on the West Side and brought home a 2-litre bottle. (You know it's kosher from the yellow cap.) He tried to find cans, to no avail. We opened it the other night to try it: it's very sweet and thick. The aftertaste reminds me of diet pop. But I discovered a few minutes ago it has a side-benefit (beyond the purity with God): it keeps the fizz long after it's opened. We drank from it on Friday, and it has been sitting in the fridge since then. The fizz factor has always been a downside to buying a large bottle of pop. We just don't drink enough to get it consumed before the carbonation leaves! I'm wondering how it does it. Maybe it's the sugar, maybe it's the Lord--who knows?

sing along in new york

Last night after a long afternoon of grading quizzes and essays, I went to a little Karaoke party on 3rd and 27th. It was a good deal: you get an endless supply of beer, wine or sake; sushi and other appetizers for a fixed price and two hours of Karaoke-ing in a private room. The sake was watered down (which explained why they set a whole liter on the table), but it was fairly decent as was the sushi. I had never done Karaoke before (other than once in high school when a friend had some VHS tape that played maybe five songs), and its a little unnerving at first, singing your favorite tunes to bad music and weird background settings, but the more sake you drink, the more fun it gets. It was so fun, we paid for another hour--and there were some votes for another after that, but those who were slightly more sober than everyone else said no, though sadly.

It was one of those night when I fell in love with New York again. I suppose you can do this in millions of other places in the States, but something about doing it in Manhattan on a rainy Saturday night just seems more special than anywhere else.

coffee houses and buses

Note: I wrote this blog some time ago. I don't know why I never posted it.

I've spent almost six hours in the last two days in two different coffee houses. (I spent yesterday grading 30 finals and today calculating the final grades.) One on Irving called 71 and the other on 14th St called Gregory's Coffee. You sit by real imbeciles, by and large. Yesterday, I got what is usually a primo spot in 71: this little window seat table in the corner. I very rarely have scored this place. But, the two people next to me were rather annoying. They were both in their early to mid thirties, and they were talking about the "next big thing" they were going to do with their lives. I don't think they were very well acquainted. There was a lot of blase flirting going on, and in true Sex and the City fashion, exchanged business cards. When I first sat down, the woman was going on and on about how she loved music, but she didn't want to work in the music world; she was afraid it would make her hate it. The guy talked about how he might turn out to be a guy who owned a drug store or something.

I know that just whatever it is I'll do will be great, he said. He did not say this in a facetious manner.

Then they talked about MySpace. It's so dangerous, she said, in all seriousness. I think relationships should be face to face.

They finally left. Soon a different pair showed up: a NYU student and her Upper West Side mother. The chick was complaining about how she didn't have any money so she couldn't see movies, and the mom was telling her about the pros and cons of the movies she'd seen. I could tell the mom was one of those women who used to be a total cheerleader type. Just the way she talked and was so positive about the minutest things--not to mention the bleached hair and "trying to be young again" makeup. AND THEN, the rather fat father (obviously some kind of Wall St. person) came in and wrote the poor NYU chick a nice fat little check so she could pay her credit card bill.

On the bus I saw a man who looked like an older version of Michael Douglas in the movie, "Wonderboys." He was obviously going to a peace meeting--he had all the paraphernalia: ragged backpack covered in pins shouting for various peace struggles, a pair of high water pants, Birkenstocks and a well-worn stocking cap. My guess was correct, because he talked to some guy about being late to a meeting (he certainly wasn't going to a corporate meeting) and got off on 3rd and 1st. The Catholic Worker house is there. That and the War Resister's League on Lexington are the center of the universe for peace work in New York.

is this irony?

After my rather snobby bit about cars vs. public transportation, I was hit by a rather annoying story as far as public transportation goes:

I left for work, as usual, at 9:30 a.m. I don't have class until 11:30 but you never know when you'll get to Flushing because the 7 (the only way there, unless you take a bus) is notoriously slow, so I leave two hours before every day. I got to Times Square and all was dandy until we were under the river between Manhattan and Queens. The train stopped. Which wasn't entirely unusual, so I didn't think anything of it. But several minutes passed. Finally the conductor said there was some kind of trouble, he didn't know what, was up ahead. Eventually we moved but were stopped again and again. After a while, the conductor said there was a huge amount of debris on the tracks at 82nd Street (the 7 is an elevated train through most of Queens and the wind was atrocious yesterday). All trains were stopping at 61st-Woodside (about 50 blocks from where I needed to be). By the time we reached that stop it was 10:45. I called the school and explained my predicament, and they were cool with it, but my students were going to make presentations so I really needed to be there. When we reached the last stop, we were told we could get on Long Island Railroad for free or take buses to Flushing. I tried to take the train, but got on the wrong side and saw it leave from afar. Then I tried the bus but the buses were packed and destined to be slow. There were car service cars, but a lot of them were price gouging because of the incident. I managed to find a car that only charged 4 bucks, so I snatched that one up. Actually, the car found me. I was an obvious target, wandering around cars, peeking into the windows of black Sedans. The driver was very nice. What should have been a 10-15 minute drive turned into nearly half an hour because of the traffic and Con Ed doing construction everywhere. I got to school around 11:45.

It all worked out, and it makes me laugh now, but it was very annoying then.

As a side note, a woman was snorting dope or something beside me on the train the entire time. What makes me laugh about that was that she was mean to everyone else in the car but me. She turned to me at one point and said, I'm really sorry. I said, Sorry about what? She said, About what I'm doing. She indicated the little bag clutched in her hands and the straw she was using like a spoon to bring it to her nose. It's alright, I said. Don't worry about it.

hiatus of sorts

I was talking to a friend the other day, and she chided me for not updating this blog since late January. I feel bad about this, but it couldn't be helped. My life has been crazy these last few weeks. I went from having no employment to teaching three language classes because other teachers left mid-semester. I hate taking over classes, especially since I'm doing it rather blindly. I've only gotten previous grades, etc. from ONE of the teachers, plus I've never taught one of the classes once taught by someone who left under slightly murky circumstances.

But, anyway, enough griping.

Tom and I went down to Virginia this weekend to see his parents who live in a suburban yet rural part of the state. It was good to walk around in the woods (I found this little tiny creek that ran into a bog. It was very restful to listen to the chatter of the creek and feel the silence that surrounded it), see the lunar eclipse and just sleep, but we were both glad to return to the city and not have to drive a car.

You really are isolated in most parts of the US if you don't drive. But in New York City, for the most part, you can get anywhere in the city with a bus or a subway ride. It may take longer to get places (which can be a pain--it takes an hour and a half for me to go 10 miles to work) but it gives you a freedom you wouldn't have if you were sans car.

This has been a boring post. I'll do better next time...

red books

Another brief but vivid dream came to me last night:

I found myself in a store that sold both used/damaged housewares (pillows, sheets, etc.) and used books. I sat in front of this huge bookshelf inhabited by both red-stained pillows and equally stained (and worn to the fringes) books. I filled an old backpack--one I used to use in college--with books and pillows. Everything I touched grew a grimy red. It wasn't blood, but more like paint that hasn't' quite dried. When the bag was full, I sat and looked at my booty.

I don't need these, I thought, pulling out some pillows.

Or these. I removed several books.

Just before I woke up, my bag was completely empty.

I realized just a few minutes ago that maybe the red of the books and pillows were pulled out of something I used to see whenever I took the M1 home at night. There used to be a building near 57th Street that was brightly lit at all times. The windows revealed bookcase after bookcase of red books. Every time I passed this building I looked for these books, wondering what the red books were for. Then one night, the bookshelves were empty. Not a single book was left.

I wonder and wonder about these books. Where they journeyed to. What their goal was in the end.

spin, earth, spin

There are ads that paper the subway car walls. These ads sell everything from cosmetic surgery to beer (there's one beer ad that says "It's always worth it in New York"--which I don't get, really). The ones that make my day are ads for Poetry in Motion, a book that has poems with imagery of movement. Each ad has a little gem of a poem for the strap hangers to read. I saw one today that made me smile. I can't remember the poet or the entire line that grabbed me by the heart. I just remember the poem said something about, and I'm seriously paraphrasing: "all those single syllable words that spin between the earth and silence." It was something like that.

It is a nice thought. A nice image for my chilly ride home on a rattletrap subway. The thought of every word ever spoken since the beginning of time spinning between the earth and Whatever It Is Out There is quite peaceful.

My life has been a little crazy lately. I won't bore you with details. But today, for the first time in quite some time I feel a sense of--I don't know what word to use--a sense of comfortable silence. I'm sitting in our cluttered, yellow-walled Harlem studio that has an impending doom of our preferred rent being a thing of the past and we're holding the ravaging roaches barely at bay and our radiator is broken and our pipes leak lead and water. But I feel okay with it all.

I'm taking an eight-week writing workshop next month, and the hint of a novel (that has been in the back of my mind for quite awhile and has finally pulled itself out of that space) has been flirting with me. I don't know what it will be exactly, but it will be about a house. I'm seeing a house roll over the prairie.

Q dreams

I just woke up from a dream that is one of the weirder ones I've had in awhile.

I dreamed I was riding the 2 or 3 train and had to connect with the Q train. At some unknown station I saw the Q on the other track, so I got off, only to see the Q's doors close and feel the wind as it left. Now, this Q that had just departed was only a two car train. And I had never seen this station before. It was in this cave with little light and the floors were covered in kitchenware. My feet sank in wherever I walked. One other scary-looking person with a shovel got off with me. He growled, and dashed off into one of the tunnels. I was alone and scared and I kept sinking and sinking. Other vehicles flashed by: cars, trucks, other trains that weren't the Q. None of them stopped. When you wait for a train in real life you can always feel the rush of wind and the hazy light before you see or hear it. I kept feeling the wind and seeing the light, but the Q didn't follow. Other people came and waited with me. That made me feel better. The man with the shovel came back, but since there were others, I wasn't scared.

Then I woke up.

I don't always put much stock in dreams, but this one has meant something to me. I do feel like I'm standing on a platform that's swallowing me. I do feel like I'm waiting for things that never arrive. I feel both lonely and surrounded by love.

crossing the park

Tom, David and I walked the full-length of Central Park last week. It was a nice way to look at New York, or the New York that hides New York, if that makes any sense. The park starts (or ends, depending on your perspective) at 110th Street and goes until 57th. We started at 110th and wended our way down, passing Onassis Reservoir, the conservatory--and my favorite, the statue of the Angel of the Waters at Bethesda Terrace.

The sculptor, Emma Stebbins (the first woman to receive a sculptural commission in New York City), had this quote from the Bible:

Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called… Bethesda…whoever then first after the troubling of the waters stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

It's nice to have an angel in a park watching over us. The thought that we can be healed by a tremor in the water.