I should write here more. I was just reading through my old posts, marveling at them; they instantly bring me back to wherever I was at the time I wrote them.

I am well now, though a bit worried about writing my thesis. I must use it as a learning experience: I feel about this like my students must feel about their work. I can work on my empathy.

Much is going on here in the dead of winter. Patricia and I are well, along with Dulcinea and Bell. We holidayed in San Diego, where it was warm and lovely. We stayed in a Super 8 overlooking a valley filled with palms and roads and hotels. We hung out with Patty;s madre and played endless rounds of Shanghai, and I took very long walks.

I had a profound moment at a little donut shop, watching it rain. It's funny where we break through a touch the magic, isn't it?

I have also, at Patricia's behest, started meditating. Every night, I put on the thunderstorm CD she bought me, and will my mind to stob yammering at itself. I think I'm getting better.

When is the last time anyone's been on this thing?

My annual end of year post...

My eighth year of teaching done. I'd like to say it's been a fun, productive year, but it really has not. The environment at Calumet is, to put it lightly, positively cancerous - and there are people actively working to make things more so. It's the type of place (now) where one is judged not on what they do in their classroom (nor on how they do it) but rather on how enthusiastic he or she is about whatever it is the powers-that-be want them to be enthusiastic about...I'll leave it there lest I say too much and incriminate myself, but suffice to say I am astounded by the small-mindedness of some of those around me.

That being said, however, it is time to look ahead with wonderment at the summer that lies ahead.

Tonight: Patricia and I shall make our annual pilgrimage to La Pena. Tomorrow, I will begin the process of slowing-down...perhaps a double espresso (with creamer), a book of ghost stories by M.R. James (the man who made ghosts inimical instead of wispy), a spate of writing (I'm just about done with my latest story - part of a larger novel - which I love) and then maybe a movie on the couch with our two adorable new kittens, Dulcinea and Belle (who may be a boy).

This will be a summer of travel, of friends and, strangely, of eighties music. I've recently rediscovered two albums from said decade, largely ignored in their time and utterly forgotten now. The first, Love Bomb by The Tubes, was one I grew up with - my dad played the hell out of it when I was 9, and I have such great associations...I listened to it recently and was blown away by how great it is - despite it being sooooo eighties. The second, Roger Water's Radio K.A.O.S., which I knew well in middle school but have largely ignored since, reinserted itself into my life recently, and I've been spinning it compulsively.

Every summer has a musical theme of sorts - where I am at the time. Two years ago, it was jazz, when I was working on my Polo Grounds story. Last year, it was sitar music when I was looking piningly toward India for answers. This year, it's the 80's stuff that played endlessly when life was new and wide open. It still is - a few of my best friends have forgotten how to be open (as I have at times) but that doesn't matter. We never forget how to open to the wonder that is around us, we never lose what it is that makes us essentially perfect beings.

"Everybody's got somewhere he calls home." - Roger Waters
"Night people, come to the light." - The Tubes

This is the last day for me in the classroom I have tenanted for more than seven years, and I will miss it. There are thunderclouds and the wind is from the south.

Never be cynical...ever.

Thank you. Goodnight.

Mornings like this are why I love Spring in the Midwest: a glowing sky, filled with orange light yet threatening rain, o'erspreading the new green trees...it makes up for the fact that I had an absolutely ICY shower this morning.

The sky is wide through my windows. (I'm sad I shal'n't have this room next year.) It makes me think of/ pine for travel.

Below are a few pictures from my recent trip to the hill country of central Florida. I backpacked (solo) the state's longest loop trail and rode (both ways) its longest bike trail (with a stop at a strange, distant hotel between legs) and, in between these two jaunts, scorched myself on Clearwater Beach...I have hardly any skin left on me.

Enjoy!

R.I.P. Lavinia Brugioni. Go forth in peace and light, dear friend.

Once again, the last day of the year is upon me. Though not unhappy, I'm sort of limping into summer this time around. I've been so terribly busy and want nothing more than to just be for a spell, but I shalln't get that chance. Jeremy and I are speeding off on Sunday to conquer the Buffalo National Scenic River (backpacking) and then I'll get home just in time to start the Northwest Indiana Writer's Project (my month-long intensive graduate course). And then, later in July, Patricia and I are off for a fortnight en Madrid, Spain. Sounds great, but in my exhausted state, it feels overwhelming.

So, this entry may be a bit disjuncted; if so, I apologize.

Just some random thoughts:

I'm reading World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks...utterly phenomenal. Literary, intelligent (featured on NPR's Talk of the Nation!) allegorical, political, and genuinely scary - it's one of the best books I've read, and is helping to lessen the awful aftertaste of Atlas Shrugged.

Tonight, my squaw and I are heading off through the darkness to La Pena's, an Ecuadorian place in the north of Chicago. It has become a tradition (and something of a symbol) for Patricia and I to go there on the last day of school every year. I'll say, in December, "It's only six months and three days until La Pena." There's a fantastic mural on the wall there. It makes me think enormous things. The place has somehow gotten all tied up with big images of freedom and light, and has thus taken on an import wholly out of proportion with its actuality...

Jay Bennett of Wilco died recently - this saddened me deeply. Jay was an integral part of the Wilco sound from 1995 through Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2001) - the band's glory days - and was ignominiously dumped, due to conflicts with Jeff Tweedy, just after YHF's completion. Afterwards, he faded into obscurity as Wilco got big.

About two months ago, just out of the blue, I bought Jay's album The Palace at 4 a.m. I'd been meaning to forever - the title is just so evocative and I wanted to see if the music matched. (It does; it sounds like what Wilco should sound like - unlike the last two Jayless Wilco albums.) Then, shortly thereafter, I rented the movie I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, which documented, amongst other things, Jay's firing. The movie made Jay Bennett look like a schmuck. He was not.

I have come, in the last few months, to very much identify with Jay, for he, like me, was a person who had ideas and had no problem (joyfully) sharing them. The rest of Wilco took this as a threat, as evidence that he was taking everything over, and dismissed him, and made him sound like a chump in the process. I've faced similar attitudes - people think I'm controlling and domineering, that I take over things, and this is not ever the case. I've found myself on the outside of a closed circle more than once just for saying "Hey, how 'bout we try this," when no one else has anything to say. It's a painful experience.

I saw a bit of myself in Jay Bennett, someone who went through the same things. And shortly after I rediscovered him, he died, and I took it very hard.

But it wouldn't do to change, would it? It wouldn't do to become the type of person who withheld my ideas just to fit in. I'll honor Jay's memory in that way. Had he not spoken up, Wilco may not have become one of my favorite bands. They may not have made such glowy, echoey, wonderful, maddening, difficult, lovely music. They may not have spoken to me in the awkward, broken place in which I found myself shortly after I broke up with my first girlfriend.

So, rest in peace, man. I love you. Jay Bennett (1962-2009).

...

To end on a lighter note: I thought I'd list some things I like (and want to do more of) and a poem I wrote.

Things I like:

Being up very early in the morning.
Drinking coffee outside early in the morning.
Reading on the beach.
Riding through tunnels.
Backpacking into solitude.
Long, deep-sleep afternoon naps and their accompanying dreams.
Waking up from these naps. It takes a long time, but then life breaks out.
Afternoon thunderstorms.
Writing something great and then walking around feeling like a writer.
Twilight in cities, when the lights come on.
The smell of oceans.
The way the world smells when it rains.
Outdoor cafes.
World music.
The new hat I bought. I look like Hemingway/ a douchebag.
Humidity. Rivers. Jungles. Valleys. Islands.
Late-night thunderstorms.
Always traveling.
The following is a poem/ lyric I wrote.

I’ve dreamt of Zambezi The mud-fat Mbini I’ve followed the dirt tracks To small distant cities I’ve waited for nightfall The ascension of evening When the Maseru tradewinds Blew dust from the hills Your silence still stings me Your dead eyes defeat me Your coldness still clings To the backlighted clouds O, I’m dreaming of home I’ve clung to the beacons Of fog lamps and searchlights The Skeleton Coastline Is illumined and ghostly Cafes at midnight Toasts to old suffering A volley of music From the Windhoek slums I’m swept into sleeping By the hum of a rainstorm With a warm, blue-eyed angel Whom I’ve never known O, I’m dreaming of home I lie in the corner Of her moody apartment So gently she sways To a rhythmic sonata I’ve met her in Bata A depot in Kinshasa At a minibus stop In the Bloemfontaine hills In cafes in Nairobi We sipped from dark coffee As the rainsqualls tapped rhythms And puddled on sills O, I’m dreaming of home Her eyes were the color Of cloudbursts and lightning Her breath had the scent Of the sea’s ebb and flow Her voice was the murmur Of breakers on islands The soft hiss of billows On distant atolls Her fingertips told me A story of longing A tale I’d believed Only I’d ever know O, I’m dreaming of home

Say goodbye to Alexandria leaving...

Sitting in a cafe on a balmy Easter night...I am established at a hotel, prepared to embark tomorrow morning on a solo exploration of Louisiana's longest trail. Being down in the Deep South is like visiting a very good friend, like a homecoming. There is something about the Springtime here, especially in central Louisiana, where I came four long years ago to lick my wounds and find solace in solitude (and accomplished both). I am here again to lick my wounds, though they are wounds of a different sort now. I am not sad and forlorn this time (Patricia and I are well, and I wish fervently that she were here beside me) but I am so tightly wound up over pointless crap, I've found it to be increasingly difficult to just be in the moment. Teaching (and all the accompanying BS related to the No Child Left Behind Act), the pursuit of the Master's Degree (90% of what I have to learn and do is dross) and the constant struggle of the yearbook (which I hope dies) have made of my life an endless vortex of accomplishing things without any sense of achievement. I feel as though I have become disconnected from the beauty of the world around me...I feel as though I'm stuck in a crappy Ayn Rand novel, where I must adhere to a mindless philosophy with nothing logical at its core, and that the more I work, the more I am damning myself...

That's why a trip like this is so important. I was reminded today of how much I love my life, of how beautiful the world is. Driving south on Louisiana SR 165 in the rain, blasting Brazzaville and MIA - it's an elixir. I'd forgotten how great listening to Neil Young and Crazy Horse jam loosely (and loudly) over a chord and a half for twelve minutes is, how great immersing myself in a William Faulkner novel is...Today, I remembered, and though I've not yet calmed the tumult within me, I am at least aware of where (and who) I am again.

I did have a somewhat sad revelation while sitting in the car at a roadside rest area, reading Sanctuary as a twilit rainshower passed over me: many of the friends who were with me four years ago while I sat in that same spot are no longer with me...our paths have diverged. I am coming to grips with the fact that this is (mostly) a good thing. I cannot be with anyone unless there is a purpose - writing, making a film, traveling, exploring spirituality, creating something. I've no interest in being a face in a crowd, where I'm welcome just because I'm familiar. I've been told that I hold people to too high standards; perhaps this is true, but rest assured it's not even close to the standards to which I hold myself; and perhaps this is not true, for all I expect of my friends is that they constantly give what they are able to give - with honesty and joy and kindness. I expect of my friends what they should always expect of themselves. Nothing more and nothing less.

Ironically, I am much less lonely than I have been. As the number of friends has dropped away, the connection with those who are left is the greater.

Even if our paths have diverged somewhat, however, I still love you, and I believe that one day, we'll all meet again.

I cannot wait to hit the trail tomorrow morning!

Best,
Daniel

"Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love." - Francis Bacon