Oh What These Trees Have Seen

Well, I have left Austin for most of the summer. I said goodbye after a night of delightful belting to Asian karaoke with friends and H once again piled me into her little car as we headed to the airport. When I arrived, it was 78 degrees. I flew into San Francisco first, watching as the city stumbled over itself in architecture, and then an hour later I was leaving it, nostalgically sighing as the Golden Gate turned into a little red line as I moved North. When I landed in Chico, my family was there waiting. Even my father had worn his bright orange UT shirt I had given him as a gift, claiming that he 'just grabbed something randomly' when in fact my mother told me later that he had searched for it to adorn my arrival. And, sigh, I was home.

After just a few days in Chico, seeing old friends, watching Barbara Streisand movies with my mom, and eating dirty burritos, I prepared for a road trip with, gasp, my parents. I know most people may not choose to go on a five-day hiking trip with their parents, but you just haven't met mine. Yes, they tell the same jokes, buy terrible touristy shirts and like Subway too much, but they are pretty awesome. As a matter of fact, we are kind of a unit now, after years of it being us three (my sister at college or in CO), we just know how to function. I just sort of bop between my parents, hiking and talking geography/history/politics etc with my dad, while I gush about life, love and books with my mom (this also includes watching really embarrassing to admit movies, such as Flicka 3-as though two weren't enough!).

After a five hour drive we finally arrived at Yosemite. Our first day I coerced my mom into hiking with us a little bit, which she did until it got hot and steep, and my father and I trekked on. At the end of our hike we saw a lovely waterfall that surged into Hatch Hechy, which I learned later is San Francisco's drinking water, so lucky you, city folk. An interesting thing about this hike was that we ran across a group of-I could spot immediately-middle-school kids. Immediately, I thought of my kiddos. Where are they? Is someone watching them? Are they READING? And we found out they were from the city. I wondered how many of my students had ever gone somewhere where nature prevailed in that indomitable way. I also wondered how you could ever really know how big life is if it has never revealed it's vastness to you. Yes, a building can put you in awe from it's grand shadow, but a canyon, a waterfall, a mountain-those are the edifices that make everything in you still until your soul finally can creep out of slumber and into grace.

Day two was a bit more eventful. After driving an endlessly winding road to get up to Yosemite from our hotel (apparently only the wealthy can stay in lodges near the park-I mean we're talking 400 bucks a night at some of these places) we arrived at the highest point of the park: Glacier Point. My dad had vigorously highlighted dream routes for us to take and finally had settled on this "Rated 10, that rarely happens" hike that was listed as 'Moderate' and just over 10 miles. OK, I thought, we had done more than that before, and my dad told me it would be all down hill-Easy as pie, right?

After my mom snapped some photos (excuse my Facebook uploads, please) of us in our clean hiking outfits, we left her with the car and a free afternoon reading in the valley as we began our hike with plenty of water but NO lunch. All was whimsical at first, with accents from foreign hikers humming around us like little birds, but with more awkward khaki accessories, and we had found a lovely waterfall about two miles in. There was little uphill as we kept walking, reminiscing on past travels abroad and strange interactions with locals. We even came across a pair of Czech guys who I nearly bat my sweaty eyelashes and clucked at as they hiked by us, old jumbled Slavic phrases sticking to my tongue. And then......the uphill......and the downhill. The sun was beating down on my perpetually pale skin, we had not packed lunch and it was past one, we still had thousands of feet down to the valley (our destination) and here we were going UP all of those miles we had gone DOWN! Well, my adorable hiking euphoria had worn off and I was, to be fragile, a bit 'testy'. I was getting shaky and my legs were tired. My poor dad had sweated through his shirt and I wondered why we are so disturbed as to torture ourselves like we were. And then, the steepness flattened, I could taste my own salty sweat (probably could pluck the salt crystals off and put them in a shaker) and there was an incredible waterfall. You would think, after all those waterfalls, you'd become indifferent, but each one is so uniquely beautiful that you forget the others instantly. OK, to make a long story short, the hike took over five hours, my fathers toes bled through his socks, we were limping and I ate a huge salmon burger at the end. And in retrospect, I can almost think "oh that was a nice hike, not too tough...."


Oh yes, the trees, oh how I get sidetracked! OK, so moving on to Sequoia National Park-Day 4. So, my dad and I are nearly incapacitated from all the downhill. So much so, that my dad, hiking OBSESSED table for one, missed out on a panorama hike with the best views of Yosemite yet (again, see Facebook for said photos and ignore my disgrace at being a Facebook slut this past week). He sat in the hotel on Day 3while my mom and I had this great bonding experience where she hated/loved me as I forced her on a hike that she totally rocked (literally).

 So.....picture these trees, not dense like most conifers, but instead they are sprinkled around completely dominating whatever patch they're in. The giant sequoia. If you want to feel insignificant, try and wrap your arms around the rustic red trunk of one of those trees. They are millions of years old, some of them, and they are resilient to both fire and insects. If we want to talk evolutionary lottery, we might as well cue up the DING DING right now. Nothing can kill these, as we saw on our 'Stump Hike' where a chainsaw made a poor attempt at slicing through one. it carved what looked like a smile (I tried not to think of the Joker but it was tough) into the trunk, and it looked like one of the healthiest trees there. Even if you did have the machinery to destroy one of these ancient beauties because, well, maybe you don't have a soul and like beating grandmothers or something, you can't even use the wood because it splinters instantly. HAH! And the funniest part of the day? When my mom says, "I don't really like trees that much" when we are THERE in the most MAGICAL tree forest in the WORLD and she just smiles out the window, mildly unimpressed. I would wonder how we were related, except for she had already begun daydreaming at that point, and then it was undeniably confirmed that my love of nature from my dad is in me as equally as the dreamer inside of my mom, and while they aren't compatible in two separate people all the time, they are forced to play nicely when they live inside of me :) Perhaps someone just like me made up fairies, too....seems about right. 

So if I could be a tree, I would be YOU Sequoia. You are incredible, wise and can not be torn down by earthly powers. It is only when you wish, when you tire, that you fall. And oh, how the forest laments you when you do.

And then, there is other beauty too, that makes you feel small. My dad, notoriously unromantic, tells me (after definite prodding, for sure) that he knows mom 'is the one' and he has always known. To hear that, after spending a bit too much time in tiny, 'the smell lingers',  quarters with them, I felt small. I'm not talking about the bad small, just the small that reminds me I know so little of love. These two, going on 30+ years, are still best friends. They know each other in a way I know no one has ever known me. And in some ways they are that rare Sequoia, so rare in a forest of easily broken and destroyed trees that barely make it through the winter, where as they simply keep growing, more incredible and majestic with each season. There are so few like them, but perhaps that is what makes people stop with their cameras and IPhone Instagram to celebrate them. I know I like to.

Gracias for your patience with that tree analogy, I just couldn't NOT do it, ya know? Anyhow, still in Chico and still riding the same purple cruiser from high school. More later, from my little hometown summer stint :) And, a teaser for weeks to follow, picture H and I sweating through Guatemala....pretty tantalizing image right??!

The Bluebonnet that Grew from Concrete

This time last year, Austin was suffocating in 90 degree temperatures + humidity and all the bluebonnets that once had dreams of breaking through soil, were trampled by the beginnings of one of the most intense heat waves in Texas since the early 1900's. Sadly, no families did the cliched trample across the meadow, clad in kaki pants and white Polo shirts, because there were no state treasures blossoming around Texas (and if there were, I couldn't find them). My parents came and went on Easter, remembering only the feel of sweat down one's back that feels more like a mobile spider on your spine than anything else. Instead of a magical hike in Emma Long Park, my dad and I trudged through an almost palpable curtain of thick, humid air, both of us bitching about lack of water and squinting to try and find anything remotely alive around us.

This year, however, the forecast is much more favorable and the flowers, from all the recent rain, are absolutely electrifying around Hill Country. The most interesting arrays, to me, are the ones that pop up between highway lanes, as though mocking modern industry in their blatant blandness and refusing to let them prevail. Instead, the flowers culminate in every spare corner, using the grayness of the road as but a mere template, like a white wall, in which to splatter their colors upon.

My kids and I (ahem...students) studied a Tupac poem back in November called, "The Rose that Grew from Concrete." I was thrilled when, after only slight provoking, the students understood the symbolism of the rose being Tupac the artist, and the concrete as his tumultuous childhood and past. I was even more thrilled when my students remembered this poem, and it's overall meaning, last week when I had them connect that poem to the book I read a passage out of called Before Tupac and D Foster (I can't find the underline button, so please forgive the book title not being underlined). If there is one common theme that brings students together, it's struggle, and from that common theme I hope they see another: redemption.

One of my students, we can call her I, has lived apart from her parents (who are in Mexico) for almost two years now. She came here to learn English, and so she has, and over the two years, and the divine pleasure of teaching this young girl, I have watched an impossibly emotional situation filled with loneliness and linguistic isolation turn into one that is triumphant. She did not hop a bus home after an entire school day throwing a foreign language at her, or crying at home over homework she couldn't understand and birthdays come and gone in Mexico she'd missed. She stayed, and rose above, and now I has a confidence that two years ago seemed light years away. (And of course this student, I, has had some less adorable teenage moments, especially with eye rolls that need no translation at all, for they are a worldwide F*#$ you, but hey, she is thirteen after all, and I can be a bit pushy.)

Last week, I watched as she laughed at a joke the AP told her (in English), the same AP whose mere presence and voice once made her scurry behind me, almost pulling my dress down to hide beneath it, like a little toddler.

The beauty of redemption is that there is always a chance to change and be better. Let's look at Stanley Tookie Willims III, who was born and raised in SouthCentral LA. He was the co-founder of one of the most infamous gangs of all time, the Crips. After being convicted of murder four times, he finally begain to seek redemption. While in jail, Williams wrote numerous anti-gang books and pieces of literature geared for kids and repeatedly admitted to making bad choices in his past. Now, does his story end well? Unfortunately, not as well as we'd like. Arnold Shwartzanegger did not let the obvious 'change of heart' of Williams affect what was imminent, his execution. Now, don't be angry with me for not giving you a happy ending (truly, I apologize!) because Williams did get his redemption, in my opinion. He forced the connotations from his name to be switched from one of the worst proponents of violence and gang authority to one that now helps teach kids the bloody reality of such a lifestyle. He gained the atonement, if not from his state, at least from himself. He was part of one of the most important processes of the human spirit: transformation.

Let's just say, I may or may not have just ordered his book for some of my more gang-interested 7th grade boys......

So why is it that we want to rise from something? Why not stay down, low to the floor, and look at that concrete and think, well, at least it doesn't get dirt under my nails....

I don't think there is an actual answer to this. I think it should, and will, remain one of the must delicious secrets of humankind (second only to the hiccups). Why is it that most of us have an internal arrow trying desperately to point north, toward Heaven or whatever place of sanctuary and self-actualization we can think of? I want to believe it is more than indoctrination from a society that tells us what is good or what is right, because my little nephew, who doesn't grasp the English language yet, knows that being hugged is good, and that laughter is divine, without being told that by society.

And again, to regress to my obsession with non-verbal communication, I will tell you the brief story of last Thursday......

I had taken three of my ESL girls to see the Hunger Games, one of which was I, (mentioned earlier) who read the book in Spanish (since her reading level is at about 2nd grade). Well, when I's grandmother came to pick her up, she insisted on getting out of her car. I watched as she slowly walked toward me, her face carved upon by years of life and laughter, and she came right up to me, tears in her eyes, and hugged me tightly. Not one of those gentle hugs, but a hug that says, I want to hold you and tell you something with my grip, because this is what it means to not let go. While there were brief words exchanged in Spanish, we were both silent while she held my face with her small wrinkled hands, both of our eyes on the verge of flooding. She reminded that loving and sharing and believing are the signposts that guide us, that make us want to be better, and that this process never should stop, even when you are 78 and raising teenagers. I know that whoever hammered those relentless signposts within me is responsible for everything I have tried to do and be in my life.

Even though the bluebonnets couldn't rise last year, they still lived, even suffocated and shrunken they waited beneath the earth for the next spring, when the rain would come, because it always does, and then they resurrected, more beautiful and plentiful than ever. I suppose we should all hope to reach such profound redemptive beauty. After all, it's Spring guys, and all that poetic crap is a cliche around this time of year for a reason....because those flowers can teach us something after all.

Music, while it speaks for you: SXSW Part One

Here I am, hosting what just may be the most gifted, beautifully talented female band on this tumultuous planet. There are clothes all over the room, food scattered around the house, and more towels that have been flopped on doors than I've ever seen before, but let me tell you, when your house is full of love, you don't try and poison such things with, "Did someone take my boots?"

I guess what I like most is seeing these people, who somehow have traveled thousands of miles and yet to me, have just appeared simply upon my doorstep, who are from another life of mine. They fumbled out of J's van at around 2:30 am with striped faces bent from sleep and endless reusable water bottles but they were, to me, the vestiges of home, that have been carefully plucked and placed on my doorstep like fresh, boisterous flowers. Last night, those flowers sang, unabashed and overflowing with sisterly silliness in a way that makes people want to just ask, "How have you created such a family?"

I like to pretend I'm a part of this. I know that J and E do too, as they sat in that room with me last night, playing a rock and a stick, anything to chime in with those three (I even played a Klean Kanteen, which could really not be MORE Chico if it tried). I am reading an entire book about the "Being Part of This" phenomenon. A priest, living in the most gang scarred part of L.A. and thus the world, who is letting the most horrifically nurtured people finally feel like they are family. This priest rides his meager little bike up and down the most dangerous streets in our country like a delivery boy, but when he reaches in his basket there are no newspapers, only his aging, patient hands that finally open up, bare to the people living there, welcoming them to join in this love thing.

I love to hear stories of change. I love hearing that, people are not born terrible, though they may do terrible things. I like to hear that some people are so strong that they can kiss you after you murder someone they love, instead of scraping your limbs off. I like to talk of these things, this book, this world, with the Knight sisters and J and E, because when you say your thoughts out loud they sort of expand, and rise higher in the sky, as though they have dreams of their own to see something else just above that cloud. And sometimes, I can sit with these people and say nothing, because the music is speaking to us, sometimes whispering and sometimes chanting all the palpitations of your confusion and lust to the point that you feel undeniably satiated when that last instrument is put down to rest.

Sometimes I do get a little jealous of the music, though. It must be something most divine to play really, truly well, or to open your mouth and sound like some kind of creature best suited for beautiful island cliffs. Now, don't get me wrong, I like the solitude of writing, truly yearn and savor each quiet spec of time that is bequeathed me from wherever it is peace comes from, but sometimes I see people perform and glow and it makes me sad that I can never see how people are affected by my written words. Even, on the rare occurrence that I do touch someone, I miss their face, they little sound that escapes their mouth, and I do think it would be nice to share in that exchange with people, in my way of trade.

On that note, I intend to hear more music in my house tonight, as a matter of fact the band is set to return here from the store filled with all the makings of the perfect white-person-imitation Mexican feast that is sure to be incredible. And, of course, the wine will be opened and flung in the air with an overzealous toast that will inevitably remind us that we are young and life is, indeed, happening and singing with us, all the time.

More on SXSW later!

What Love Has To Do With It

So, here comes that day again, where everything is covered in blood red and bubble-gum pink and you are just trying to buy a pair of socks and the only thing available has little hearts or a fat baby cupid on them....and oh God, it must be Valentine's Day.

This time last year, I had just broken up with a guy, N, that I had dated way too long for anyway, but it just sort of kept happening. He bothered me with his pompous guitar playing and when he gave me a burned CD, (silly me, thinking they were songs from his favorite bands) I quickly realized it was all him....playing the electric guitar with an alarming amount of vigor. N always had grease in his fingernails, from being a mechanic, and wore too tight of pants. He really was a nice guy, but other than having a shared love for Mumford and the Avett Brothers, I wasn't sure what else there was to talk about.

I suppose breaking up with N ranked somewhere on my list of: Send grandma a big-ass Valentine's card, buy peanut butter for survival, schedule hair appt., break up with N.......

Does this make me sound mean? I hope not. But, let's be honest, unless someone is really blowing my socks off it's just not that worth having my precious time yanked from my palms. Not that the initial games and intrigue aren't enticing, because of course they are, but eventually, moving so many pieces start to make my hands hurt and I just want to go home.

Last weekend, I went out to Nasty's, Austin's best hole-in-the-wall bar ever, with some of my favorite people in this city. We drank great beer and played egregious pool and all the other great activities one expects from a wildly adorable sitcom about twenty-somethings. In this event, A, a good guy friend, was asking about my love life. I have grown use to this being a topic of high interest to those that are strictly monogamous and 'tied down'. I suppose one could even find humor in the, who is Kristen dating NOW? game, depending on the phase in my life. After telling A all of my male woes and raves he looked at me and said, "But wouldn't you rather be single than just date someone not great?" Well geez. When you put it like that, DUH, and of course that is totally true. After all, I am quite content doing things alone, more than most I fear, and thus I am not as wildly overcome with despair when men come in and out and prove to be disappointing (which, to date, that has been all of them, not that I'm counting or anything...). A smiled, perhaps because he was feeling better that I wasn't dating just because I had nothing better to do, and was calming his own darling fears that I would settle and then spend my forties staring out a glass window at an overly manicured garden or something. He gave me a nice pat and the back and I too felt reassured, having verbalized that I indeed would not let mediocre male behavior fly, and we continued to drown another pint.

The truth is, there is a lot of love happening in my life. Why, let me tell you, my students continue to surprise me with their warmth and the way they divulge precious information like beautiful little sand dollars that have taken so many years to be created and revealed by the ocean. I look forward to little hugs in the hallway, their happy faces when they get answers right, and the way those feisty little detention boys hover around my room when I'm not even their teacher! Lucky me! And, can I just say, seeing my 8th grade boys choose Tupac poems about loving unconditionally, was enough to make me literally make a cooing noise, then abruptly have to do a sort of cough-clearing-of-throat cover up. But truly, my work allows for me to feel alarmingly loved, and let me tell you, the feeling is mutual. Plus, let's be honest, there isn't a cuter pair of nephews than my little boys in Colorado. If there is anything I thank Apple for, it's letting me FaceTime with my babies in Denver, and for letting me see the newest train track Carter has set up, and the way Weston rests his soft head on my sister's chest, with those big pink cheeks and long eyelashes like his father. Why, just last week, Carter proudly snatched me (well, the me inside the phone screen) and dragged me to the impressive stack of snow outside their house, yelling, "Tia, snow, snow!"

I suppose sometimes, it is normal to think, at 25, that you just have rotten luck, or that you pick bad male specimens, but I think that is mostly narcissistic to think you're the only one with such odds. I mean, seriously, is there anyone in NYC under 30 and in a serious relationship? Could Katherine Heigl and Mandy Moore have careers if there weren't so many single women with dating battle wounds lining their hearts? Certainly not. I mean, I am a product of a father who treats me with respect and as an intellectual equal, and a mother who, verbatim, told me, upon telling her I was dating two guys at the same time, "Kristen, don't make any commitments, you've only been going out with them a month! Have fun!"

I do like fun, and I am young (though I feel old after controlling teenagers all day), and I like the idea that I am still free to do all the little delicious things that make me happy. I can head up a book club, do happy hour every Friday, go to coffee shops on weekends, start a boot camp, go to writing meetups, take up sewing, watch hours slip away at Book People, and leave the country for a month without blinking. Yes, I suppose eventually these things will be eclipsed by a relationship, perhaps even a small-town life that will frighten me at times, but overall I think that there is a lot of love around me, floating and bobbing like little balloons with fat inflated heads, reminding me that it's alright to be just where I am in life. Love isn't meant to be categorized, as we tend to do, always ranking romantic relationships as number one. For I know it to be divinely true that, when my students hug or thank me, when my mother tears up about how much she misses me, or my best friends back home remind me of our past adventures together, I don't think of men at all, I just think of how damn lucky I am to have any of that love stuff at all.

And I can not end this without telling you of the most important, yet most difficult love of all: the love you have for yourself. Now, I know this is starting to sound like a quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants or something, but it's true. So many people don't really know or love themselves, but instead absorb and deflect the love from others. I feel grateful that at 25, I at least know myself, though there are new discoveries all the time, like the fact that I literally do squeal and jump into H's lap at scary movies, but overall, I am content with who I have become and I could certainly look in the mirror in some kind of video montage and tell myself, "Hey you, I kinda love ya."


So, in case you hate Valentine's Day, try not to, because it's a bit cliche to do that and also, you are way too loved to have a right to hate anything, don't you think?

Where Will You Place That Cap?

As the New Year begins, I find myself making my inevitable list of everything I wish to conquer, achieve, and encounter in 2012. But, before I let my pen touch paper with this activity, I look back at the year I have already had, the one that has brought so much to who I am and what I have here, in Austin. I will share some of the things, to you, in an attempt to encourage you to reflect as well on things gone by.

Things Gone By: 2011

1. I acquired my dream job: teaching middle school reading at KLMS
2. I finally began to make enough money to relax and at times, indulge
3. I went on a journey with my parents to Canada, Oregon and Washington
4. I spent a month in my dear Chico, in some of the most beautiful summer weather I have yet seen
5. I went on a trip with Heather to San Francisco, Santa Cruz and the Redwoods
6. I lost someone but gained others, and healed almost in full
7. I greeted a nephew, Weston, and held him in my arms when he was less than a week old, and had the most perfect shade of pink on his skin
8. I grew professionally and now have a confidence that I did not know I craved nor possessed
9. I wrote....and wrote some more......and have not lost my urge to FINISH my book
10. I kept all my family and friends safe within my sacred world, all while welcoming new ones, ones that will illuminate me more magnificently than ever before
11. And finally, a very small one, I purchased a banjo and started playing (though awfully) for no one in the world but myself

As I write this list, it is both calming to see what I have done, and thrilling to think of the list that will be written a year from now. Each year is so palpable with possibilities that it brings one into a near seizure with giddiness at what is possible for one that is 25, in possession of great family, friends and career, and so blessed. It seems unfair, in a myriad of ways, that I should get this time for myself and for exploration. That I live in country, where I can dream and be whatever pattern I choose to lay down. I read my students an article that discussed the Time Magazine "Person of the Year" for 2011, which was "The Protester" and found myself yet again preaching the blessing of living in a free country. I want them to see the world and its beauty, as well as its numerous flaws and inequalities. I want them to open their eyes, the way mine were thrown open, and I feel that in a way I am indebted to lady luck, and to appease her I must expose cruel truths to my students. Don't get me wrong, they love learning about such things, and though I feel at times guilty for pressing my strong feminist agenda, they have learned about real social and political issues in a way I know aren't taught by many. But how can I not? How can I not think of those who are not as sublimely lucky as myself? I am so privileged....but you know what, let's shelf that thinking for now because that is a much longer, more self-loathing post for another time.

I know that 2012 will surely have one thing in it, one thing that follows behind me like an elaborate, beckoning shadow; I know that I will long for the leaving. The leaving, what a statement? But it's true. I have a severe case of wanderlust, that I can not shake, no matter how violent my attempts are. I am always curious about the outside, of this safe little world, this local kind of city. I still want to live in Rio, Cairo, Vientiane, Istanbul and Antigua. No matter how much I love a place or a person there is a part of me not living inside, but that wants to trace the outline of a larger landscape that I can roam free upon. I will never stop loving the mystery of Ireland, the movement of tongues and language and castles in Prague, and the relentless battle of the old ways of the Andean Peru. It doesn't help to be around the whimsical minds of H and the delightful new arrival of R, from San Francisco. But I will try and lay these dreams of wandering aside for a while, and allow myself to be wrapped in the smushy embrace of middle school teaching. For most days, my longing is stretched only as far as wanting my students to find happiness, safety and greatness. But sometimes, I turn my spindle further, and my long line of velvet ribbon may weave over an ocean, and then I suppose I may have to leave again.

Until then, here is my list of 'goals' for 2012, none of which will burden you with 'weight loss' goals or sentiments and longing for great love, since those are both redundant and implied.

List of Longing and Attainment for 2012:

1. Finish the school year beautifully and with resounding accomplishment (and with a contract for the following year)
2. Join more Austin Sport and Social groups-such as kickball
3. Go to more poetry readings (and do some readings) and live music in Austin
4. FINISH MY BOOK!
5. Cook more healthy, locally grown meals
6. Maintain and create new friendships that nourish and don't deplete
7. Start a book club (I am already in the process of this)
8. Run 2 races (first one is scheduled in February)
9. Learn to play the banjo semi-well
10. Go to Central America for three weeks and experience absolutely everything I can (this is also planned, loosely, for July)
11. Move into a studio apartment and enjoy the sanctuary and silence of living alone
12. Buy a pet?
13. Volunteer more (get involved with Austin Literacy Center, perhaps)
14. Watch LESS television
15. Read 50 books
16. Wear my hair curly more (I have not started the year off well on this count)
17. Don't let myself judge others prematurely (especially guys, whom I can be either extremely hard on or extremely lenient with)
18. Watch four of my dearest friends in the world get married (2 weddings)
19. Write to my grandmother more often
20. Take time to drink tea and appreciate all that is lovely about myself, my life and my home

Alright, I think this post has enough meat in it, though in a different format than others, and it is now time for me to eat this hummus, feta and olive sandwich and talk with R about whatever comes into our whimsical little heads.

So I implore YOU to go forth and ask, 'What have I done?' and 'What can I make be done in this year before me?'

The Lights Abound

I do love this time of year, when everything is particularly luminous and aflutter.

Finally, winter weather has arrived in dear Austin and I have to say that it does help jumpstart the holiday season. Call me crazy, but 75 degree evenings does not make me want to drape the house in garland. If I wanted weather like that, I would brave the superficial nonsensical nature that is L.A. (sorry in advance to those of you that live there and are quite truly good people).

It has been a hectic time at work. You would think that three days off for Thanksgiving would rejuvenate us, similar to a cucumber face mask at the end of a long day, but if anything my co-workers look more overworked and irksome than ever, as though the break was more of a sharp gardening tour being dragged over their face. It's hard, with students that spend their evenings playing video games and eating orange #5 colored snacks all day long. I think all those chemicals make them sassy. It certainly has made me want to race home and pop a bottle of something to stop the constant thoughts of how my students will pass their classes. It seems that before the end of the grading period, all my ELL boys unfailingly are piled into my room with fifty missing assignments that feel impossible to tackle in twenty two minutes. All those little moments of 'kid free time' are suddenly filled with sticky fingers, Spanish, and the sound of a chips bag crumpling.

Lately it has been especially hard to get my kids off my mind, even when the lights are off. My nightmares, while always regularly occurring, have become especially prevalent in my dreaming state. They always start with kids being in my actual bedroom (now now....don't take this in a sick direction, or a creepy one where they're covered in blood or something) and I realize that the lights are off! How in the world can they READ? So I try to get up, feeling guilty that I could possibly have slept during a lesson, when I realize, oh shit, I can't let them see me in my pajamas! I am horrified, and confused and sure I will be sacked when suddenly, I cross over into consciousness and realize I am dreaming. These dreams have been every night for the last two weeks, so now I can not escape being a teacher even in sleep! I'm sure if I were being filmed, like for my reality TV show, there would be some very scary sequences of me sitting straight up in bed and telling non-existent kids to get their feet off my bed, or to use more correct grammar when addressing a teacher.....

I have also found some lovely co-workers at my school. There have been many 'choir practices' (codes for happy hour) that have made the culture at school a lot more unified (even if we are unified by a habit to drink beer in large mugs after a hard day). It's really hard not to want to drink beer, especially in the winter. H told me the other day that she simply wanted to move to Ireland so she wouldn't be alone in her passion of sitting in a pub. I completely understand this urge, and in fact, have been so moved by the fantasy that I have been to Ireland and Scotland twice now, and surely I will go five or six times more just to hear those truly juicy accents. It truly is as romantical as we think it is, for the first three days, then one does get a bit bored and bloated.

But let's get back to lights. Yes, the lights. What is it that makes them so pleasing to the eye? I put up a strand of white lights in my room and viola, it is transformed into a den of incandescent beauty. Suddenly, I want to listen to different music and journal. The same with candlelight. Is it really that romantic or have we just seen countless movies that tell us true romance is only seeing 5% of the person you're making out with? And, what is it about the lights of downtown, that once there make you feel almost invincible? And why does the little street, 37th Street to be exact, look so much more darling when little luminous bulbs are hung from the roof? I don't know. All I know is that it is lovely, and we can not help but be inspired and drawn to it. Just our modest Christmas tree, not even weighted down by ornaments, makes me want to be in my living room now than ever before. It's why, in Prague, I would stand in Old Town, awestruck, by such beauty of the clock, lit up. I remember one night in particular, with the snow coming heavily down in the square, and it was late, perhaps 1am, when I should have never been alone, but I was. The Square was empty and yet, it was shivering with light. The towers boomed above and around me, shimmering, as I walked on the snow compacting beneath my feet. It was as though that whole night was posing for me, just so, and I have to admit I was quite unable to control my arms from flying up and my body moving in circular movements until it was one, fuzzy dreamland of light.

In the winter, especially the holidays, there is almost a community from light. People are brought together around it, celebrate how many days it lasted, and drape it in and out of our homes to show that we are part of a common rejoicing. It is funny how, over the years, my family has developed new traditions (an oxymoron, I know) that as kids we didn't do, but now they are among my favorite ways to celebrate. Perhaps the one most dear to my nostalgic heart is the lights tour my family goes on in Chico. We pile into one car and, with a local paper in hand, my father guides us around town in search of the most well displayed houses in the area. I also get to hear my dad give off that splendid laugh that he only let's us bare witness to when he is truly happy. We have a very unique, completely neurotic ranking system which mostly consists of mocking and berating houses (I mean really, don't you know all-red lights look demonic?) with the occasional moments of silence for at truly spectacular performance. We wait all year to watch as these ordinary houses transform into glowing masterpieces. I guarantee I have spent more time judging and clucking at lit houses than I have over priceless European art (this may also indicate that I am more pedestrian and provincial than I wish to believe, but no bother). The point is, that it is the light that makes things come alive. And it is this time of year more than ever that we must pause, look around, and enjoy that way the light absorbs you, owns you, delights you.

I could certainly go even further and talk about the 'inner light' which is, no doubt, a compelling topic, but I think we all know that could go on for a disturbing length of time.

So, I will instead, leave you with this dazzling line of letters and literary divinity:

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." -Plato

Pretty Little Numbers

Yesterday was 11/11/11. It was also Veteran's Day. Put these things together and surely something will arise. H told me that a baby was born, at 11:11, on 11/11/11 and that both the baby's parents were in the Air Force. I have to say that this strange little fact made me smile this morning. I know that somewhere, a family started yesterday, and that for them, fate had her arm wrapped around the whole divine experience. Even if a cynic tells you that statically, it isn't that incredible, you know that the mother of that baby boy believes that her child was meant to come out just when it did, to enter their lives at that very moment.

My 11/11/11 was a bit different. It started with a Veteran's Day ceremony at school, where I corralled children into an over-packed gym that smelled too much like dirty laundry. I realized pretty quickly that I was a real ass for not wearing any red or white (I did have an unintentional white tank under my tan sweater, but I doubt that one me any patriot points). So, I scribbled out a flag on one of my forgotten name-tag adhesives, before scooting my 7th graders to the assembly. The ceremony itself was nice, with the music and actual good behavior of all those teenagers crammed in together in a tiny space. They had a great speaker, who had been in four wars and had that sternness about him that was secure but doesn't make you uneasy. He spoke smoothly and confidently and I was nearly ready to encourage my kids to fight under his tutelage. The part that shook me though, were the letters from war that the theater students read. One, in particular, mentioned being so close to Dakau, the concentration camp in Germany, that they could smell bone. I remember going there myself, during my 13-country-whirlwind through Europe that somehow was completed in 33 days. When I went, it was summer, and there were yellow flowers scattered along the green grass, and it was too warm to appreciate the hell of winter, with no clothes, no hair, and nearly no body fat.
This got me thinking, of numbers, of the years, that decide what your life will entail. That my students were too young to remember the sheer panic of 9/11, and no matter how passionate of a lesson I gave on it, they couldn't get goosebumps the way I did, every time our principal comes over the loudspeaker, because it reminds me of my high school principal, telling us in his deep voice that the towers had fallen. I wonder what their memories will be, how they will stick, and if I will even dent them at all.
I did have a nice surprise at work, other than the assembly, and that was the return of one of my students from last year. He returned to Mexico last March and I hadn't heard from him since. I remember being so worried about him for weeks afterward, and then, as time passed, I worried and remembered less. I pretty much begged for him to be in my Reading class, and was pleased to see him on my roster Friday morning. He looks a little intimidating perhaps, with his baggy clothes and solid stature(and an almost perpetual hood), but when he smiled upon seeing me, I couldn't help but hug him back and beam. I will hopefully get the chance to bring him up to grade-level in reading, and, possibly equally as important, monitor him and help to make him feel welcome and safe at school.
As the day progressed, and my 4th period class filled with 7th grade boys sucked all the energy from me, I found myself gearing up for a rowdy 'Choir Practice' with some co-workers after school ended. I drank two beers and ate about a pound of queso, all while enjoying the bitching and banter that is unique to teachers. We have our own vernacular, as many professions do, and middle school teachers love to discuss the chaos of our daily working lives. It is a funny bond that teachers have, I think, mostly because when you're at school it feels like nothing else in the world exists. When I'm at work and in my room, which has no windows, there could be any number of natural disasters sweeping through Pflugerville and I wouldn't bat an eyelash. Beautiful, 70-degree days are simply wasted on me, because I am in a room that smells of sneakers and boys all day long. Let's not even go into the cleanliness of the pillows I have in my room for students to use while reading.......
But let's fast forward to last night. So, it is H, C and myself heading over to my friend D's house for an 11/11/11 party. We are meant to bring 11 shaped food items, such as long thin pretzels, or perhaps we could bring Yasmine Bleathe and let people snack on her fingers or something, but instead I brought those french Piroutte cookie things. Anyway, right off the bat I see that most the people there are the church folk I met the previous weekend on the retreat, so I was feeling mildly popular, which has not been a common feeling in Austin, let me tell you. There were so many sweet, charming twenty-somethings that I about died of joy. H immediately saw one of her own idols, a famous Austin blogger that she follows, well, I would say religiously but H and I aren't great at going to church....so let's just say H follows her methodically, the way a mathematician has to count those tiny squares on ceilings. The woman's boots were akin to the torso of a Collie, and she had a glow about her that assured confidence with a hearty dab of warmth. Now, it isn't often that H and I have an 'on' night in front of the cool people in our presence, but I do believe last night was one of them. People seemed to at least think we were as resoundingly funny as we thought they were. It seemed everyone we met was either in film, writing, or the business of saving African countries from emotional distress and famine (perhaps in that order). A few times I looked around to see if we might get our picture snapped for the local paper or something. It is strange to crave that kind of juicy discussion, where you can talk politics, poetry and philanthropy and then just as quickly crack a joke about how your pastor got the word "package" during Taboo and turned beet red. (Too bad the buzzer sounded before he could attempt to give us clues on that one.)
I find that most of the time, being in my mid-twenties is not so glamorous. It is mostly me flopping out of bed at 6 a.m. and messing with the coffee maker in a baggy t-shirt and blurry vision. Or, me looking dozing off to bed around 9 p.m., with a copy of some literary gem I've picked out to feel more well-read but have hopelessly discarded after ten minutes of skimming. But, occasionally, I meet friends for wine at Vino Vino and look around at the dim lighting, at the incredible people surrounding me, and I really let it sink in that these are probably the damned days of our lives or something. At work, things are a little too crazy to really sit around thinking, "Wow, we're changing lives here....." it's more like me looking around and saying, "Please, so and so, take off your hood," or "Seriously, is that your foot on my chair?"
A saying I have like recently, which naturally stemmed from my shouts at H's dog, Sophie, is "In what world?" I find that I want to say this all the time to my students, except I know they won't understand it. Though, in the hallway, when a kid was banging on the walls and disrupting other classes, I couldn't help but let slip, "In what world is that OK?" and give him my most ferocious scowl. He looked too confused to really give me any satisfaction (this seems to be a trend when teaching tweens).
So where was I going with this post? Well, I haven't the slightest, so I will attempt to connect that numbers are strange and confusing and yet, in a weird way, they are the equalizer of language. My kids straight from Mexico can't greet you but hey, they can knock out a division problem. I could end with something cheesy, like a smile is also universal, but let me just leave you with my guilty admission instead.........speaking of numbers........I watched two seasons of The City (yes, the spin-off of The Hills) in the last week, and though they are just 12 minutes long each, it still is gross and I probably should have tar poured on me and then rolled into a pile of feathers or something.