Walking like a Giant

Usually, I write a blog on my last day of school, ruminating and reflecting upon the year that has just passed, and looking forward to the summer.  Well, because my last day was as busy, hectic, and ultimately as fruitless-feeling as the entire year felt, I did not get a chance to write, nor did I have the inspiration to.  Now, however, a full week into summer, sitting at a table in the Student Commons building on the University of Chicago campus, listening to a thunderstorm (possibly severe) roll in, my inspiration has arrived, and, blessedly, so has my chance to write.

This just-passed year has been, in almost every way, the toughest I have had as a teacher, and it has made me question how long my timeline as an educator will run.  This is sad because, all immodesty aside, I am a great teacher…maybe not in the ways the increasingly overbearing, atavistic Department of Education would approve of, but in all the ways that matter.  I love my students and have formed real relationships with them (and make fun of them all the time to reiterate that), and they love me, and my partner-teacher, reciprocally, I love the literature and the writing I am still fortunate enough to teach between all of the tests and preparations for tests and practice tests and pseudo-real tests that I am forced to administer, I love my coworkers (even if there are a few that I’m glad to have a break from), and I love how I’ve been able to find success in an increasingly hostile environment for education and educators.  That being said, however, all of the useless crap that makes up a larger and larger part of teachers' jobs has begun to burden me and wear me out, even more so than usual.

So, this summer, thus far, has been a concerted effort to find my center again, to become, more and more, a rock rather than a flotsam.  I want to be one that does not fluctuate up and down wildly with the waves but who stays rooted as the waves pass over - grounded.  I have been listening to an old four-record set of Gregorian chant music, constantly, almost compulsively, as I’ve moved through my morning (sic) routine of coffee and reading, taking inventory and meditating, cleaning the apartment, organizing things, doing yoga, writing…This music inspires me a great deal, as it feeds into my inner desire for space, clarity, order, discipline.  I am learning to turn my insularity, my introversion, into a positive, a necessary respite.  I know that it is time to get down to real work, spiritual and mental, and there is no more fitting soundtrack than that.

And the results are, already, beginning to manifest: I am sleeping very well (and very late), much of my sadness and unease is diminishing, the apartment is beginning to come together (four shopping-cart loads of stuff removed from one small hall closet…yikes), I am in a great routine of yoga and meditation, and I am about to finish, already, my second novel of the summer, Stephen King’s excellently pulpy Joyland – all while taking the usual litany of disheartening Union calls in a stride that allows me to respond (not react) in a positive, productive way.  In short, I am starting to feel myself again.  I feel more and more like a giant walking on the land, rather than a leaf floating on a stream…

And Patricia and I have had some rather transcendent experiences over the past week.  On Wednesday, June 5, we took our annual sojourn to La Pena, an Ecuadorian restaurant in northwest Chicago; on the way, the stormy skies, grown blue with twilight, made me think of northern Europe, Russia or Poland…exquisite.  While there, I opened two packs of 2nd series Garbage Pail Kids (expensive to find unopened packs from 1985, but a great way to celebrate a return, if only briefly, to the innocence of my childhood) and found several of my favorite cards, most notably "Spacey Stacey."  And, Sunday, she and I took the Metra up to Ravinia to see her favorite band, The Indigo Girls, with Joan Baez.  The venue was lovely, and the night was lovely, and though our vantage from the lawn was a bit obscured, the mood and the music were quietly magnificent.  And yesterday, on beautiful 57^th Street Beach, I read and worked through a barrage of Union stuff, placidly, whilst finally getting something done in the way of a tan.

I’ve a long way to go, but I am getting there.  Next week, I am planning to hike, solo, the Knobstone Trail, Indiana’s longest at 58 miles.  (My wifey is in California for two weeks, by the by, working for a nursing facility called Fern Lodge, which she loves…so that’s why it’s to be solo.)   It will be tough, and rugged, but I am looking forward to it in a very “Big Two-Hearted River” way.  I can’t claim to have shellshock like Hemingway’s protagonist, but I did end the year more burned out and unhappy than anyone who has had a successful year should.  Returning to the most basic means of living, and striding full on into the deepest heart of summer solitude, feel more than beckoning right now – they feel imperative.

Tonight, I will finish Joyland, do yoga, begin (perhaps) outlining a new story I have gestating, and watch an old Japanese/ Russian movie called Dersa Uzalu.

Let the healing begin…ahem, continue.

And to all my friends who I’ve seemingly forsaken, please know that I am working hard to get to a place where I can meet you.  If all goes well, I will be there soon.

“I used to walk like a giant on the land/ Now I feel like a leaf floating on a stream/ I want to walk like a giant/ I want to walk like a giant on the land.”  - Neil Young.