Last night I stayed up reading Irish folklore and wondering, as I read about the fate of an enchanted isle, what my own fate will be. I believe, from years of experience, that it is futile for me to be swept into the capacious future. It is like a baker, burdened with a thousand recipes, who must focus on each delicacy of culinary art at a time or they will find themselves fossilized beneath mounds of flour.
I do like baking but I fear analogies only sound good in writing (and at times, they are aggravating even then). When applied, they can rub one raw and irritate skin and soul. I truly am trying to not think about years slipping beneath me but instead focus on the many years that will throw down as my steps find the earth. My roommate was showing me wedding blogs last night. We spent a while gooing and awwing at the delicious decorations and ornate gathering of colors and light. I want to blame our infatuation with wedding pictures on the fumes of hair dye that were floating around our living room, but I know better. Heather's eyes were not on that anonymous woman's wedding but on the transfer from screen to life that will surely happen for her one day. And yes, the visual of dangling lights and romantic ribbons ensnared in true love was enticing, delectable even, but I can't think about that now. I must think of my book, my friends, my adventures in teaching that will never produce the cape we need.
This lack of daydreaming is strange, if you happen to know me. Much of my life has been spent sloshing around in the realm of dreams and future fantasies. Often people would move a hand across my face, trying to bring me back from where I'd been only to find me disturbed with the jilt into present. It took great feats of nature to bring me back from the ornate worlds in my own head. But now, I find myself less and less capable of these indulgences. While I hope this is not a reflection of a stomped heart, I also feel it may be my own ability to embrace the moments at hand, if not only more slightly than before.
I suppose I can not omit current events here, that relate to a bleak future indeed that I don't care to fully digest (though, when you live with three other teachers, it is hard to not want to have dialogue about said issues). As all of you who function in society (and don't curl beneath your bed sucking your big toes) know, there are severe budget cuts all over Texas and the country. Cuts is a strangely appropriate term, for they are indeed severing new teachers from fulfilling their dreams of a career. We are full of life, fresh-faced with annoyingly rosy cheeks, willing to fight for what is not and to thwart those obstacles we deem breakable. This is not to say that veteran teachers aren't juicy beings as well, for they are, and we newbies look to them with almost pathetic, forlorn eyes! It is just that new teachers demand change fiercely, and for the most part we are free agents who can invest in our work in a way mothers and fathers most likely can not. When I sacrifice my time there are few who weep at the bloodied rock.
But I digress......what I mean to say is, linking the many offspring of this post, is that when I think of the vast, stormy future of education I feel as though nothing can change an inevitable crumbling social structure. I simply can't digest the immensity of the future. I am better suited to be besotted with smiles in front of me, noticing how one of my students used the future tense with such fluidity that I want to cry. And, when I am with my students (babies, let's be honest) I am forced to think of what I can do right then, not what this country will take from our children in decades ahead. Obama proclaimed that must educate our children in a way that demands change and higher-level thinking, but all I see is the contradiction of this-our new teachers who have been reborn beneath this mothered philosophy are the very ones being "cut" from the looming, swelling body of public service. We are discarded little limbs, pale and yearning to be allowed back on the vessel of education, of work, of change, though we know it is rotting. We still want to be a part of something.
It is the greatest crime I have seen yet, save for my visit to Auschwitz and the horrors of Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge. For this crime does not show blood or death counts; I fear the taking of dreams and drive will be what destroys this country before anything else. For I see around me, too many new teachers who have a rhythmic passion for children, for knowledge, for work and to take that self-actualization away from them, that growth in character and that training of heart, is in fact a crime of global proportions. It reminds me of Stalin, in a way, how he sucked the life from his occupied territories not by strict violence (he only did that sometimes) but he stripped their color, their purpose and their right to sing, pray, rejoice and gather. Subtlety does not mean the crime itself was less, perhaps it just means no one knew how to translate one language of destruction. For bodies may recover, over time, but the soul takes nursing of epic proportions and I fear doctors can not reach in and grasp the very spot of that pain.
I must stay focused on now. I can't think how this summer, once thought to be a dreamy string of vacations and hiking through the Pacific Northwest, snuggles with a nephew and musical harmonies of WorldFest, could turn into the repetition of doubt and hopelessness as last summer was. I will instead embrace what I can do now. How I can work with these kids now and spread infectious learning like the sneaky roots of the Aspen tree, until we are all connected, just beneath the soil, in an entanglement of hope.
So here's to that knot of something stronger than what we are alone, that can only exist in the present moment, without the burden of time. I hope to stay here as long as I can, but I fear it is easier on a Sunday than on a Monday.
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