a new day

today i broke up with my girlfriend. a girl named hali, whom i've been seeing for about the past month and who has treated me absolutely wonderfully.
i, however, can't say the same of myself. i hold myself up to a relationship standard, always have. this time around, i am also dealing with my life with a full-time job as a first-year teacher. the work never ends for this job, and i feel the effects day in and day out. and one area of my life is dragging the other down. so, i had to make some choices. and that's how i got to where i am.
also today, we had an assembly at school based on the life of rachel joy scott. she challenged people to make a difference from day to day, to keep a journal, and to appreciate the people in your lives whom you love the most and whom you will always keep close to you. during this part of the presentation, the presentor asked the audience to close their eyes and picture the 4 or 5 people in your lives who absolutely mean the most to you day in and day out. each one of these people for me was a member of my family. no one else was really in this category right now.
family is #1 for me, and right now, work is a close second. i dedicate almost all of my day, my waking hours, to school and my students, and it is not easy. but, as i will keep saying, and have already said, "the ends justify the means."

Paralysis

I am feeling paralyzed. I want to write, write, write, but all I can do is grade, grade, grade.
I want to read, read, read, McCourt and Sartre and Tsu, but all I can think of is Poe, and Pigman, and Piggy.
I want to think about music and movies and more, but all I can think of is Mike Mancuso, Mark Mason, and Marisa Martinez.
I want to sleep, and wake up when it's light out.
I want to go out at night, party till the morning light, and not have to worry about homeroom at 8:02.

But, I want to inspire, invent, and invigorate.
I want to motivate, mitigate, and mesmerize.
I want to make students try, trust themselves and me, and then try again.

I want to teach.

Only teaching three weeks, I have already had a milestone in my career. Monday morning, thoughts of Office Space and the "case of the Mondays" inevitably running through my mind, in addition to a million other things, I ran into a rainstorm, and left my umbrella at home. My large Dunkin Donuts coffee--just milk, no sugar--toppled down off of my armful of paperwork, and landed all over my brand new shirt, Dockers, and students' notebooks. All before first period!

My discontent was radiating from my coffee-stained pores. I wished General Zaroff would leap out of the pages of "The Most Dangerous Game" and shoot me with his pistol right then and there. End the embarrassment and ridicule.
But, fate stepped in, and I was saved by understanding co-workers, who told me to go home and change. On this hiatus, I took a step back, and realized that the students were not learning anything from my low-energy. Just because my morale was low due to my coffee stain did not mean my students should have to suffer. I returned to my classrooms re-energized and enthusiastic, and my students responded more favorably than earlier that morning.

That day, I was the one learning a lesson first period, even if my students didn't. Every day, I must teach as if I haven't spilled coffee all over my shirt, for if I am miserable like I was after the coffee incident, the students will not learn anything, and they, too, will be in a state of paralysis.

The Elasticity of Life

This is exactly how I had hoped the night would end up.

You see, I've been feeling creatively stagnant lately, like the water that gets backed up in your garden after heavy rainfall, the water that has yet to settle into the soil. I had hoped to drink, and drink until I hit the point where I experience the "click," as Ignatius in A Confederacy of Dunces likes to call it. And this drinking, as I remember Professor of British Literature Charlie Robinson saying, makes us more worldly, so that we talk about more important, more scholarly things than if we were to just drink a case of Natty Light, for instance.

I was thinking about possibilities for my creative banter even before I went out tonight, as I was lying down in the foyer of my house, waiting for my buddy Dave to pick me up and take me to the bar. I was staring up at the ceiling, thinking about rubber bands.

Seriously, rubber bands. Until a few days ago, I had been wearing a light-green thick rubber band on my right wrist for a few weeks now, since right before I got the job at Sachem. I felt some kind of importance with it when I met my new boss for a drink and he was wearing the same color rubber band on his wrist. And just last week, when my cousin, another wrist-rubber-band-wearer, had asked me if there was any significance to my rubber band, I hesitated and had to ponder an answer to his question.

I couldn't come up with an answer.

But I know quite a few people who wear rubber bands on their wrists. And I wonder, what is the symbolism in this piece of elastic? As I was lying in my foyer, waiting for Dave to pick me up, I was looking at the chandelier right above me. This chandelier has been in this house ever since I've been here, which is now 18 years, and probably even before that. Yet, it has been held up by the same cord the entire time. This one cord, which lasts decades, has been holding up the light above us without fail for almost 20 years now. But, I never pay attention to this very important cord. Instead, I--like many other rubber band-wearers--place the importance on the elastic cord I place around my wrist every so often. The same rubber band that breaks after being worn out after so many days. Imagine if the cord holding up our light wore out as often. Our light would come crashing down on us.

As I was thinking about this cord-conundrum, I was staring out my screen door at the sky, which was being bombarded with strikes of heat lightning. I was thinking about what would happen if lightning struck as often as rubber bands break; if, like the chandelier cord, light could just fall down and strike us with a drop of a dime, or, a snap of a rubber band. I wonder why people place so much significance on something that can snap and be ruined at any moment.

I suppose, however, that maybe that's how we should be living our lives. As if they could break from their spiral routine any minute, from being too worn out, or too weak to carry on.

I suppose that was what was going through my head when Dave picked me up, and I decided to go out and live up my life to its full elasticity, securely fit and strong around my wrist each and every day.

Measuring Life in Odometer Miles

Do you ever pay attention to your odometer? I always look at my odometer; it's like my crystal ball. The miles I travel in my car are symbols for my life.

I remember pulling out of Ralph's two summers ago, after managing my first year there, at 45,000. I remember crossing the border between Queens and Nassau County on my way home from school last year, at 55,000. I'm constantly looking at my odometer in hopes of noticing these little coincidences.

Often, I will look at my miles, and the mileage will match the temperature exactly. For instance, tonight, as I was driving home from Border's, my odometer read 71,710 and it was 71 degrees out. How do these coincidences keep occurring? And why do I keep noticing them? I tell you what, though: I'm not going to pass them off as merely a chance occurrence.

My 71,710 drive tonight was kind of significant. Well, my odometer reminded me to check the significance of my drive and my night. I was at Border's reading up on some education and teaching material, preparing for my double-dose of interviews that I have tomorrow. I ran into the mother of a friend of mine, whose husband happens to be an assistant principal in one of the districts where I am interviewing tomorrow. Another coincidence.

Nervous as I was in preparation for tomorrow, I did, however, manage to crack a smile with the Border's employee who rung me up. Straying from the normal clerk-customer pleasantries, she responded to my "How are you" inquiry with, "Just a little sunburnt," (obvious from her lobster pigmentation surrounding her blue tank top), "but working through it." Continuing to catch me off guard, since cashier-banter is rare and mostly banal these days, she commented on my shirt, an image of Ben Folds that says "Sham On." We got to talking about Ben's touring schedule, and I asked her if she's ever seen him in concert. She remarked that she "hasn't had the privilege" and when I responded that he comes around the area pretty regularly, she said so matter-of-factly that she's "kinda from Kansas." And her fun, teasing matter made me laugh in an unexpected, much-needed way, that it made me wish that every interaction with a stranger should go this way, with a friendliness and a worldliness that proves each of us is inherently good and sincere, something I've been wishing would be proven to me for a long time. Unfortunately, I'll need some more experiences like the one with the lobster-colored Kansan to truly be convinced of that.

Earlier today, before 71,710, I was discussing with a friend of mine "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot, wherein I was trying to remember the line, "Do I dare to eat a peach?" So simple, yet so profound. Upon a reread of the poem, I am struck once again by the line, "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons," and it makes me think of how I've been measuring my life with the miles I travel in my car. There are so many metaphors I can discuss from here about the road of life, and as Martin Sexton says, "It's in the journey that we find that there is no destination," but I'll save the road metaphor for another place and time.

Backtracking just a bit, I will return to the topic of coincidences, on and off the road. Whenever I think of coincidences, chance happenings--a run-in with the parent of an old friend, a random encounter with a stranger, the alignment of my odometer--I can't help but think of James Redfield's novel, The Celestine Prophecy, in which Redfield discusses nine insights into human culture. A few of these insights revolve around a certain recognition of coincidences that occur in our lives from day to day. According to Redfield, we are to proceed forward from these coincidences until our awakening to life's coincidences opens us up to the real purpose of human existence on Earth, and the real nature of our universe in which we live. Whenever these things happen to me--at Border's, in my car, or wherever--I am always trying to place their significance in my life as a whole, or the story of my life as others might see it.

As I see it, my story is constantly changing, with new chapters beginning and ending with each (you guessed it...) turn in the road.

Standing Outside the Fire

The great thing about coming back home to Long Island is the off-chance, the random occasion, that you see somebody out whom you haven't seen in ages, and whom you are actually happy to encounter. This happened to me tonight at Applebees with an old friend of mine, Dennis Regan.

Dennis and I were in Scouts together, so we saw each other every Tuesday for 6 or 7 years (if not more), in addition to all the camping trips and other weekly events that we Scouts used to partake in.

One time, on a trip to Washington DC, Dennis and I formed a band with a couple of other of the guys; we called ourselves the Hot Scouts of America. We even wrote a creed, in the form of a Batman & Joker-sort, out of cheese-in-a-can written on Ritz Crackers, which proclaimed that we were the Hot Scouts and any intruders shan't mess with us. Man, we were cool.

Dennis and I really haven't stayed in touch since he delivered the convocation at my Eagle ceremony in 2004. I was really glad to have one of my best friends in the group induct me into this selective group that we had all striven to be a part of ever since we joined, as Cub Scouts, back before we had any sense of what Scouting was or what it would mean to us.

Scouting taught me how to be part of a community; it taught me how to give back to others and how to let myself have fun at the same time; it taught me values and morals--personal integrity--that I carry with me from day-to-day, wherever I go; it taught me how to appreciate others and all that other people do for me.

I hope Dennis looks back on his Scouting experience as fondly as I do. It's something I don't talk about too often, but something I'm damn proud of. It has made me who I am today, without a doubt. And it's funny, in the ironic/"this must be a sign or a symbol for something" kind of way that earlier today I finally--after three years have passed--hung up all of my Eagle Scout plaques in my room, as a constant reminder of the values and good memories in my life that I should cherish and keep with me always.

As I finish typing this rather reminiscent blog, it is only fitting that the shuffle on my iTunes brings up the one song that will always remind me of Scouting: "Standing Outside the Fire" by Garth Brooks. Now, I'm not really one for country, but the Baiting Hollow Scout Camp would always play this song at their end-of-the-week campfire, where they showed clips from the week to all the campers, who got the opportunity to hoot and holler at the counselors who became friends that week, or their fellow Scouts who were caught in the act of goofing off.

But I can use Garth Brook's song as a metaphor to my own life: a reminder to constantly stand outside the fire, and look at both my own reflection in the flames and the images of those people who are surrounding me, joining me in my campfire in my camp, where I am the counselor, constantly stealing glances to my clipboard, planning activities, and living my life one day, one week, one summer at time, with the help and support of those who currently surround me (my campers) and those who are there to surround me and support me for the long run (my counselors-in-training). Everyone I meet has their choice of camper or CIT; they have to learn stand outside the fire themselves and make their own choice.

Sometimes, you just need to run into someone from the past like Dennis Regan to remind you to take a step back and see where you've been and where you're going.

Speed Limit LI

Driving down the road, looking into my rear-view mirror, I see the reflection of trees coming through the sunroof onto my sunglasses, trees that pass by with each mile per hour; and I am singing soulfully with the windows down, my hand out the window, feeling the air whip by with each mile per hour; and I know that I am home in Long Island, where the trees overhead and the wind all around and the music in my ears all remind me that this is where I should be, for each mile per hour in a day, everyday.

Where the Ocean Meets the Sky

Sometimes on lonely nights I like to take a drive to the beach and stare out onto the water and think. Tonight, since I'm in Delaware and the closest "beach" is an hour and a half away--and not just a drive down Nicolls Road to Corey Beach, as it would be at home--I decided to drive to nearby historic New Castle, where Delaware Avenue collides with the Delaware River in a fantastic view of the Delaware Memorial Bridge that connects this small state with New Jersey.

I don't know exactly what it is about the ocean--or any body of water for that matter--that leaves me basking in wonder and amazement. It may be the salty air, or the marriage of land and water, or the infinite distance that is the horizon. Sometimes it is the reflections of streetlights or the light of the moon bouncing off the water, or the sound of the choppiness in the waves, or the 10-foot long reflection of my body being stretched along the water, a shadow being cast by the light of the moon onto the massive canvass of the ocean; whatever it is, I am at home around the beach or water.

Tonight, as I was walking along the path adjacent to the Delaware River in New Castle, I was remembering a phrase that my dear friend Cos had uttered to my friends and I nearly three years ago to the day. It was after a long night of heavy drinking down the Jersey shore, where we rented a house on the beach in Long Beach Island for a week--ten guys, recent college freshmen, on vacation together with no inhibitions and endless supply of beer and food.

It was one of the best weeks of my life.

One night during that week, we were all sitting on a bench on the beach, facing the ocean, feeling blissfully peaceful (and no doubt foolishly drunk), when Cos uttered his now-infamous proverb: In 5, 10 years, this is where I want to be. This is where we all should be. We want to be there--(pointing out to sea)--where the ocean meets the sky.

We all proceeded to vision ourselves in 5 or 10 years down the road, being in this same place of contentness and resolve, that we bought into Cos' madness and repeated his oration of being where the ocean meets the sky, until we all doubled over laughing at the absurdity of the statement.

Despite the absurdity, now three years later, I am still facing the water, striving to be where the ocean meets the sky, wanting to own that feeling of infinity, of limitlessness, of bliss with a hint of uncertainty, and hope that, whether in Corey Beach, New York; Long Beach Island, New Jersey; or here in New Castle, Delaware; I'm on my way.