music: Bobby McFerrin- Circlesongs
I went rock climbing for the first time in years last Sunday. I got the call from my teaching buddy Doug, who has all the necessary gear, and two days later we were down in the Quincy quarries finding toeholds. It was easy as falling off a granite monolith, even after all these years.
My first climbing experience, formally at least, was on Minikani’s first AC wall, where I harnessed up and climbed a fairly easy wall, learning snazzy commands like “ready to rock” and “ready to ride.” It was a very easy wall in retrospect, but enough challenge for me at age 11 to really feel accomplished getting to the top and ringing that bell. What was harder, I remember, was the rappeling. I climbed here and there since: expeditions to Devil’s Lake, a route randomly here and there, and most recently a quick ascent and rappel on my Outward Bound course in Colorado. Considering I hadn’t been on the wall for a while, I did reasonably well.
Climbing is an incredibly personal practice, a meditation in balance and willpower and a study in microcosmic space and minutae. Every millimeter matters, every ounce of weight matters, every muscle matters. It feels, when it’s done right, that you can do the impossible. It always amazes me that I can climb certain routes successfully and never put weight on my rope, yet depending completely on the safety the rope provides to feel comfortable being up there 20 or so feet clinging by my fingertips to a small crack or outcropping. Granted, I’m not climbing 5-12’s or anything like that, but still from afar some of the climbs I did looked like flat wall from the ground. Climbing at all is tough, tougher on the mind than on the muscles I think, but such good discipline. The routes at Quincy weren’t all that big, but provided enough verical space to make my universe a simple and dazzling clear challenge of how to get from here to there.
Doug and I had a time of it. Niether of us had been out in a while, but we did well. We both remembered enough knots to anchor and tie in, how to belay, and all the rest. We both got a little scraped up around the knees and elbows, a little tired and hungry, but glad to be out on a nice Sunday in late September. A lot of climbers were out, so we got to enjoy a little climber culture as well. It was a great way to spend some free time on a Sunday, and I was Ready to Rock for school on Monday. Rock on.
music: Fruit Bats- Echolocation
Teaching is a quirky profession as far as how it fits into society. On a person-to-person level, it seems to command the utmost respect; when people ask what I do and I say I teach high school, i get the “oh, good for you.” It’s one of the only jobs I can think of that has that universal moral approval. People can’t really say anything bad about teachers without being morally reprehensible. Other public servants, especially those in politics, usually have the same social conscience as teachers but they receive all sorts of blame and criticism. Even police officers, whose job is to protect and serve us citizens, are constantly criticized for their work. Funny that the same person signs teachers’, police officers’, and city councilors’ paychecks.
And while teachers are looked upon favorably from any angle, they don’t see that appreciation in their paychecks. For a profession held in such high regard you’d think teachers would make a little more money. You’d also think, I suppose, that public schools would receive more funding than they do. I guess adults take their schooling for granted once they have finished with it…and it’s funny that the adults making these decisions are ones that have succeeded at school. We live in a country where the President makes under a quarter million a year, which is around the lowest of the low starting salaries for professional athletes.
Maybe there is a connection. Maybe people are so morally approving of teachers because it is clear they do their work for reasons other than money. Teachers are held in high regard consistently above the public defenders and community doctors who are doing tough work and making comparible salaries though, so perhaps there’s a larger stereotype at work. Maybe it’s that everyone living in this country at one point has had an experience with a teacher. The profession is not anything so erudite or mysterious, and people can relate on some level. Whatever it is, I’ll take it. Oh, good for me.
So sometimes, the mere mention that I am a public school teacher is enough to earn a little bonus here and there. Case in point: housemate Matt emailed me an ad up on Craigslist last week: Sony 5 CD Changer, Free to School Teachers. A guy is giving away his nice cd player, but only will give it to a public shool teacher because he believes that teachers need some extra appreciation. Word. I came home today with a fairly high-end CD player. Add it to my free receiver and I’m on my way to a pretty nice component stereo system. To be nice, I burned out some music from my collection and gave it to the guy. But the whole experience left me sort of dumbfounded as to those intangible perks that come with my job. What else might I score from admiring citizens in the future?
The tiny, unexpected material rewards are a paltry thing in the long run. I’d trade all that stuff for a decent science lab at school. Or at least a supply closet to keep all the stuff we have. Or a sink in my room. A sink at the very least. A science classroom should have a sink at the very least. I noticed later that craigslist has a section for a teacher’s wishlist. I should get on that…donations are accepted gratefully. I started a classroom library from my friends’ old textbooks. It’s nice to have a new CD player, but I’d rather send kids home with hands free of formaldehyde.
music: Donna the Buffalo- The Ones You Love
First full week of work, and I have to smugly admit that it wasn’t as tough as everyone said it would be. I think that’s mostly due to my deeper experience with behavior management and the fact that I have a textbook to help me plan my lessons. I have a couple of rookie issues to work through, but no more than the next first-year teacher. I think things are going OK, so more objectively speaking, they are going quite well.
I’m realizing that all this relatively smooth classroom-side execution comes at a great expense to my free time. Who knew that your high school teachers slaved away outside of class time to plan, prepare, and set up even the worst classes you took? I didn’t. Who could imagine any teacher getting away with going home right after the last bell and showing up right before the first one the next day? Can I recall complaining about not having something graded and handed back the next day? Some perspective. Humbling.
It’s Sunday, the first brisk day of the season. A sunny day, prime for walks, work projects around the house, even taking in the Sox-Yankees game over wings and beer. But despite my best intentions, I ended up planning lessons for the entire afternoon. started some time around 11:00, now it’s about 6:45. Planned the next two weeks out, blocked out a week after that, so I’m dialed for work. It’s chill. It’s for the kids. Another way to look at it is that I’m making up for nine weeks of vacation during the summer with parts of weekends during the school year. But a Sunday down the tubes-at some point my mental health and personal life will trump the quality of my lesson plans. Not in the first month, though. This is the critical period, this is where I have to put me on hold for a couple weeks to make sure my classes are successful.
That being said, I really have to get some outside time in before the cold really sets in…
music: Godspeed You Black Emperor!- Lift Your Skinny Fists like Antennas to Heaven (d.2)
Through some incredible miracle of the natural order, a set of atoms and molecules combine in such a way to yield an independently functioning entity. Life is spawned against all galactic odds. While the majority of these bundles of molecules and chemical interactions never achieve more than the most basic instinctual and involuntary functions, a very select elite amass enough of the right kinds of chemical interactions and structural complexity to be called sentient. We lucky few, we 6.33 billion sentient biengs on this watery ball of rock, have been blessed with perhaps the most potent and complicated of all gifts in the known catalog of matter: awareness of our own life. If we are lucky, the precarious combination of molecules sustains our corporeal shells for 70 or 80 years, although rarely is our machinery able to carry us past 90 years. Our lives are defined by this limit, by the very certain and unwavering truth that one day in the future those processes which sustain our bodies will stop working. All of us know this, yet most of us refuse to believe it. Especially when it threatens us, our loved ones, and those we know. But in the end, of course, there is no getting around death. In its finality and absoluteness, death is perhaps the only thing that can properly define life.
Our consciousness is a blessing and a curse; we know from the beginning of our own self-awareness that we are working against a carefully veiled clock. That ultimately, no matter how important we are in life, how highly we measure on the human scale of greatness, we will end up worm food. Existentialism 101. I can remember one autumn night 20 or so years ago when the conditions of my own mortality hit me, I can remember crying and crying and mom asking what was wrong and me saying “i’m gonna die” and her growing worried thinking it was something that was to happen much much sooner than i was picturing. I, as well as the majority of humanity I’d imagine, doesn’t think in such severe terms all the time. Which is great. It helps us get on with our daily business, it allows us to pretend that we are somehow excused from the cycle of life on Planet Earth, that we serve a greater purpose. But as the lucky recipients of such a wonderous combination of chemicals and matter, we forget that we as humans are just passing through. On the times that we are confronted with death, things snap back into a more objectively proper perspective for a minute or two. If we are fortunate enough to have experienced that inexplicable series of chemical reactions we call love with regard to the departed, then things get painful on top of being unbearable.
My grandmother died on Saturday. She was 82. Her time was up, her clock had run down to zero. The time she borrowed on this material plane was full of experience, and me being her grandson much of this experience informed my own. But the natural order is a cruel master in its consistency; grandsons and grandmothers do not trump the cycling of nature. Her molecules were called to disband, serve a new purpose. She got 82 years, and in that time got her money’s worth. She was old, she was sick. It was her time. I can not complain, nor can I argue, but on this very real human level, it still hurts.
I made the trip to Milwaukee for Grandma’s funeral service and came back on Monday. The service itself was a modest one, simple and without frills. Appropriately. A roomful of Grandma’s family members, friends, and acquaintances gathered to pay respects and to share memories with each other. There was little fanfare, little broadcasting, little superflousness to the arrangement. Mom gave an incredible testimonial to Grandma’s life, one that I could only hope to approach had I that kind of time with Grandma, there was hugging, hand-shaking, and “i’m sorry-ing.” Even fewer went to Grandma’s apartment, the small corner of the universe she quietly occupied for over 30 years, and spent time. The scene was, in truth, odd and unsettling- for a gathering at Grandma’s apartment everything was askew. The table was facing the wrong direction; chairs were lined up in rows. Tables were set out on the driveway. Paper cups and paper plates. Strange food. Relatives I’d never met. The place was full of people, most familiar, most related, but things were not ok. The guest of honor, the social linchpin to the entire gathering, was missing. Her things were still there just as she left them-her perfume, her stacks of bills, refridgerator full of leftovers. Being in some version of Grandma’s apartment, having her presence gone but not fully vacated, was perhaps the hardest part. I had a day full of crying. I was glad to spend time with my family, my aunts and cousins, but that our last gathering in Grandma’s apartment was this one did not fit.
I am still shocked by the permanence of it all, the scope of finality surrounding death. I would like to think that although the physical vessel of Grandma has given out and been broken, some intact and pure essence of the lady floats somewhere, unencumbered by such faulty designs as the human body. As a matter of faith, though, I’m not sure I believe in such lofty things. What I do believe is that I, along with a handful of other souls, carry pieces of Grandma with us. I will always hear that voice ringing in my ears: “David, you have been given a great mind and it is your obligation to use it!” No small task, but this was no small lady. In the end of Grandma’s life, I reaffirm all those lessons and make them my own. And strangely, but not so strangely, my own life comes into sharper focus. I have been living closer to my own skin for the past couple of days, fully and vitally aware of my own human condition, that despite frequent tune-ups and oil changes I am not built to operate for more than 60 more years, and that although on even the planetary scale our singlular lives do not amount to much, on the human scale this synergy of molecules and reactions we call life is the most precious thing in the universe.
music: Jeff Buckley- Grace
Amidst all the crap on the internet, there’s some very funny stuff. Homestar Runner tops the list, but this is quickly becoming a house favorite. I’m a computer. You gotta stop all the downloading.
music: Steve Kimock Band, 12/31/02
When it rains, it pours. Boston is actually due for a two-day rainstorm, the coattails of Hurricane Frances I think, but right now we are suffering through some nasty muggy humidity. Tension, and release.
I returned from an incredibly wrenching and difficult trip home to find the 1-2 buzzing with activity. This place is positive. Ron enlisted the help of pretty much everyone to start unearthing the decades of pile-up in the basement and about two tons of scrap was moved upstairs. The downstairs suite was getting more and more set up. Stereo was in. Gina contributed pillows to the common area that looked like someone killed Cookie Monster for his pelt. Tmo’s stuff began to leak out of his room again-cables and computer boxes flying this way and that. Peet’s stuff was in semi-neat piles in the common room. Kitchen is in its usual state of halfway clean, fully used. This is a place of movement and activity, an exciting place at that, so I shouldn’t expect it to be sterile and immaculate any time soon. I have my room to keep in such an order. Fine.
We are moving forward on projects here, bit by bit. Today Marla, Peet, and Ron started to piece together some of the old salvaged bike parts in the basement while Claire, Matt, and myself cut down the ten foot wooden weeds growing out front and along the side of the house. Ron is plotting the next step for the basement and has Matt and I excited about building a recording studio in the far corner, along with a bike shop and workshop and storage facility. Tmo started clearing out the porch and back hall and tended to all the plants in the house yesterday, also did some rearranging in the kitchen. There is some good momentum here, a lot of energy for sure. We are a force: myself, tmo, Claire, Peet, Ron, Marla, Matt, and Gina. We’re getting there for sure, we just have to be sure to keep our energy directed towards positive ends and be able to remind each other of this. Our goal, short term at least, is to have this place squared by Saturday, October 9, when we host a big party to celebrate the 1-2-oh-my-god. It will also, incidently, be the Funky New Year.
With all that’s going on on the homefront it’s amazing to me that I’ve just started work in earnest and for real. Today was my first official day of work and I have to say that I have a sweet job. People are nice, relaxed, laid back. We are given an incredible amount of freedom and autonomy but also are supported financially and personally in all our decisions. My schedule is excellent. My student load is small. I really couldn’t be happier, all things considered. It’s now a matter of preparing as much as I can, hoping I’ve dotted all my I’s and crossed all my T’s, knowing that something will be left out but that I’ll be able to deal with it.
This is a powerful and exciting time. There’s a lot going on here. And yet, I am forcing myself to keep one ear turned towards Milwaukee and Grandma as she squeezes in her final days on this earth. I’ll have to go home some point in the next couple of weeks, and with that trip will come a good deal of emotional needs, but I feel a secure foundation here. The chaos and uncertainty in Boston is now slowly resolving itself, simmering into a tight rhythm. I feel vitally alive these days, wholly present, even when (and especially when) it hurts.
music: Pink Floyd- Is There Anybody Out There?
I will be flying back to Milwaukee tomorrow. It was a last-minute decision. The flight was booked last night in the wee hours. We’ve been told that despite finishing her latest bout of therapies and treatments, Grandma L. doesn’t have much longer.
I will save my thoughts on Grandma’s life for a later date. For now it’s enough to try to wrap my head around the current situation. The sequence of events that lead to where we find ourselves was a quick one; not three months ago Grandma was doing well, quite lucid and mentally sharp. I’m afraid that at this point she isn’t all there, not able to carry on conversations, not really able to form words and vocalize them. She is still able to understand what people are saying, and since there still is the possibility for some communication I decided to visit her sooner than later. Two days in Milwaukee to spend with Grandma. This, in all likelihood, will be the last time I will get to spend with Grandma, and knowing that going into this weekend visit frames the events to come in a very peculiar, fatalistic way.
But what else is there to do? I will go, I will visit, I will hope that she acknowledges my presence in some way, I will hope even harder that she will be able to say something to me. And most of all, I will have to say something to her. What do you say to someone when you know it will be the last time you will ever see them? Especially when that someone is your grandmother? There is no easy answer. There’s probably not even a good answer. But I will go, and I will see what comes out. A big chunk of the family will be there, and we together will see what comes out of these final days with Grandma.
My cousin nailed it exactly when I said that I couldn’t be disappointed with Grandma’s life; she simply said that no matter what it will be hard to say goodbye. That, however, is exactly the task set before me for this weekend. In some ways, it will be a gesture lost to an opiate haze, and I will be forced to be content with the sum total of my interactions with Grandma for the past 25 years. We humans tend to rush in at the last minute in a fit of desperation, trying to squeeze out a little more…something when we know the end is near, but in truth the greatest measurement of how you have expressed yourself to someone else is your average day-to-day interaction with them. Should I have called more? Should I have visited more? It’s a moot point now. In spite of a school year looming near and a pile of work needing my attention, I prioritize. To Milwaukee. To Grandma. Tomorrow. My eyes are already running.