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.
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