Pumpkin spice latte runnels are swirling around the inner regions of my body as my mind floats down the lazy river propelling me towards the end of the work week.
It is Wednesday and after 3 days of interrupting, obnoxious students; spontaneous, pointless meetings; and brain-crunching planning and prepping, I could use a respite.
The Borders Books and Music in which i am reading my Herman Hesse novel is teeming with animated men and one woman playing chess. These ragtag folks are shouting in excitement as they move their pieces and ponder said moves. A man in a white turtleneck, white hat, and windbreaker screeches in an Italian-American accent that could hail from Queens. A large black gentleman with a James Earl jones voice and the whitest eyes I have ever seen, clad in a brown cowboy hat, plays a disheveled man with a cement-mixing company's t-shirt tucked into his jeans. An athletic man in mesh shorts, the youngest person here, plays a middle-aged man wearing a black sweatshirt over a dress shirt and shorts, who said he didnt make it to Port Jeff library today because he finally found work.
I am intrigued by this group who is so involved in the game, one which is so intimately personal, yet surprisingly social. They know each other and talk about Borders chess players past like Charlie who's now out at the reservation texting the turtlenecked man from Queens, "I'm surrounded by happy brown men."
I am comforted by this group who makes me forget about Ben, who has been calling out and making wisecracks in class like it's his job. Or Karl and Brendan asking the most asinine questions like "Does 'odyssey' mean peanuts?" and interrupting our discussion with the faithfully annoying, "Can I throw my garbage out?" I know, at least he asked. Then there's Krystal, who seems to forget that I hate the question, "What're we doing today?"
Yet, these nuisances have driven me out of the house, and fate has lead me here to the Bohemia Borders to observe the fine people before me.
There has been a lull in the conversation--just some quiet, nervous chuckling amid the inner pondering--ever since the lone woman said, "Well, life is short!"
Her opponent, apparently losing at the moment, said, "That's true."
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
No Place Like Soul
Perfectly soothing moment in time: Listening to "No Place Like Soul" album by Soulive; cool autumn breeze enveloping the room; drinking DD's pumpkin spice latte. Doesn't matter that I'm grading when I have this peaceful feeling emanating from my surroundings.
Monday-ne
That's supposed to be my super-clever pun of the words "mundane" and "Monday." Today had that feeling, like I was crawling through an Indy 500 race. Everything around me was spinning. Over the weekend, everyone asked me, "How are your classes? How are your classes?" And when I said "Good!" with a glazed look of satisfaction ("I completed one week with success!") part of me wanted to knee-jerk a superstitious knock on wood, but I didn't. I thought to myself, in the split-second interface before a knee-jerk wood-knocking would occur, that these kids really are good and I will have success this year.
Lo and behold, I had to raise my voice today for the first time in class. I actually said the words, "I don't like this class," which is probably not true and just an immediate reaction to my having to raise my voice for the first time in a long time. I found myself working through lunch and late after school to get done the work that this busy Monday called for.
After coming home and crashing on the couch, however, I awoke to a feeling of refreshment, knowing that Tuesday is a new day, and we teachers can accomplish real meaningful things. An illuminating factor was being invited to read my colleague's blog, on which a bunch of my former students discuss matters related to their English class: http://cangelosi12honors.blogspot.com/ It's nice to know the fruits of my former labors are in tact and prospering. That is reassuring.
Such is the teacher's struggle to invigorate Mondays and everydays, to hope our pupils gain knowledge and can progress. I always refer to Plato/Pythagoras by telling my students that I hope each day with me helps them "become better" somehow. And I guess in order for me to become better too, I need to be insufficient in something. So, I guess now I can effectively become better right along with my students. Neat-o gang!
Lo and behold, I had to raise my voice today for the first time in class. I actually said the words, "I don't like this class," which is probably not true and just an immediate reaction to my having to raise my voice for the first time in a long time. I found myself working through lunch and late after school to get done the work that this busy Monday called for.
After coming home and crashing on the couch, however, I awoke to a feeling of refreshment, knowing that Tuesday is a new day, and we teachers can accomplish real meaningful things. An illuminating factor was being invited to read my colleague's blog, on which a bunch of my former students discuss matters related to their English class: http://cangelosi12honors.blogspot.com/ It's nice to know the fruits of my former labors are in tact and prospering. That is reassuring.
Such is the teacher's struggle to invigorate Mondays and everydays, to hope our pupils gain knowledge and can progress. I always refer to Plato/Pythagoras by telling my students that I hope each day with me helps them "become better" somehow. And I guess in order for me to become better too, I need to be insufficient in something. So, I guess now I can effectively become better right along with my students. Neat-o gang!
Monday, August 16, 2010
Wide Awake
It's a quarter to 4 in the morning and I haven't fallen asleep yet. Time has passed rather quickly since I got into bed at 10, so maybe I have nodded off at times, but I have been tossing and turning basically the whole night. I tried to take cold medicine to make me drowsy, but that didn't work. I blame the mind demons at work. Sometimes my life is too fast, and all I want is for it to slow down, but that seems impossible given my surroundings. Sometimes I wish I could just live by myself in the woods for a day, a week, a month, a year--just to get away. But I guess all I would be doing is avoiding reality. This is a fast-paced world, and I have to run to keep up, however sluggish I feel.
Right now I feel like I'm crawling.
Right now I feel like I'm crawling.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
...
I can't sleep though i haven't tried the song i am listening to is 'life is long' and that it is. it is 1 in the morning i keep thinking about my tooth and why it feels depressed upon my gum and i don't like that. 'so stay don't go cuz i'm fading away.' i just want to move into my new condo. i think i can call it a house. house implies one's own home almost, and this is almost my home and so i will call it a house. writing this has made me become tired so i closed my eyes for the time being and am typing this with my eyes shut. 'finders keepers' is on right now. i need to find a life i'm fully happy with. i'm not at content mode 100% of the time. i wonder if anyone is. i'd like to find that person. i want to go west; it's been too long. it's not going to happen this summer and for that i am upset. i miss the mountains, the cool summer night air, the relaxed way of life. i miss hiking in the great outdoors without having to worry about the bugs not leaivng me alone. i wish i could go back............................................................................................................................fin...............ders...............kee..........pers.
'looks just like the sun'
'looks just like the sun'
Monday, August 2, 2010
Moonlight Illumination
In an easterly direction, my car hits the road, tires spinning in an endless rotation, like the earth upon which they roll. I am on Sunrise Highway, which bisects the southern part of Long Island and runs east to west or west to east, depending on which way you look at it. Ahead of me, as I exit the highway at midnight is not the sun, but the moon, enshrouded in streaks of grey clouds, but vibrant as a lightbulb in a vacant room at nighttime.
My mind catapults back seven summers, to a time much simpler than this, when, underneath this same moon, in this same spot on Sunrise Highway, I was enshrouded by my friends, novice drivers on our way to a midnight rendezvous at the California Diner. Youths ready to indulge in waffles a la mode (my favorite), pancakes, egg sandwiches, french fries with gravy--standard nighttime snacks for the 17-year old hollering under our resplendent orb of night.
I continued driving, however, around the bend, and northward bound towards home, leaving behind this moon and this distant memory for another time, when I will need the light above me to guide me into the future by using knowledge that I have gained over the years living under the sun...and the moon.
My mind catapults back seven summers, to a time much simpler than this, when, underneath this same moon, in this same spot on Sunrise Highway, I was enshrouded by my friends, novice drivers on our way to a midnight rendezvous at the California Diner. Youths ready to indulge in waffles a la mode (my favorite), pancakes, egg sandwiches, french fries with gravy--standard nighttime snacks for the 17-year old hollering under our resplendent orb of night.
I continued driving, however, around the bend, and northward bound towards home, leaving behind this moon and this distant memory for another time, when I will need the light above me to guide me into the future by using knowledge that I have gained over the years living under the sun...and the moon.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Cathartic Peaks
Two months have passed since my last post. I could go on about my creativity, or lack thereof, but that is the theme of every other post on here from the past two years.
Each summer is a cathartic purging for me. And since I had a moment of catharsis the night before I had a literal purging in the form of a wicked stomach virus, I am going to take this as a sign. Sometimes life gets too fast, and you just have to be reminded to slow down and start anew.
I was reminded of this on Monday night, as I climbed the steps at the Holtsville Ecology Site and Park, after running two laps around the track as the sun slowly set on the blustery, sultry, sticky Long Island surrounding me. As I reached my apex, the top of a reclaimed landfill that looks out a few miles towards Holbrook, Holtsville, Patchogue, and Farmingville, I thought of the other peaks I've reached and promontories I've stood on in my life.
In 2005 and 2006, in the midst of college, as a 20-21 year old mired in self-discovery, I would run to a promontory jutting out onto the gracefully flowing White Clay Creek, amid the White Clay Creek State Park in Delaware. There I would sit and surround myself with the mellifluous sounds of a trout stream cascading around lands empty but to other nature-seekers like myself and the park's own natural inhabitants. After a few seasons completing this run, my time on the promontory led to my acquiring Lyme's disease from a deer tick, so I decided to do away with running to the promontory, and instead ran to state borders (Delaware borders two within running distance to campus), which provided momentary excitement but not nearly the same cathartic effect.
2007 was a transition year for me; I moved back home from Delaware, started working at the snack shack at the Babylon village pool (where I would often have my cathartic moments watching the sun set on the ethereal Great South Bay, surrounded by fried oil and grease wafting in my face), and got a full-time job teaching at Sachem.
In 2008, I drove cross country , where I experienced two moments of catharsis: the first, during an early-morning half-hungover run to Lake Michigan in Chicago, one of America's beautiful skylines behind me and its most delicate of lakes reflecting that skyline in front of me.
The other moment was an earlier morning, more-westerly, less-hungover walk in the heart-stealing expanse of blue skies and mountains, the great city of Bozeman, Montana. Here, looking towards the mountains in the distance, I was overcome by the size and glory of this land, and I realized I would strive to continue conquering it.
Now many years later from these separate cathartic revelations, I am at a precipice yet again, ready to move on and climb upward in my mountainous life. Until I get to my next precipice, my next apex, promontory or peak, I am content to be where I am, watching the sunset surrounding me, reflecting on where I have been and where I am going.
Robert Pirsig put it best: “You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.”
Each summer is a cathartic purging for me. And since I had a moment of catharsis the night before I had a literal purging in the form of a wicked stomach virus, I am going to take this as a sign. Sometimes life gets too fast, and you just have to be reminded to slow down and start anew.
I was reminded of this on Monday night, as I climbed the steps at the Holtsville Ecology Site and Park, after running two laps around the track as the sun slowly set on the blustery, sultry, sticky Long Island surrounding me. As I reached my apex, the top of a reclaimed landfill that looks out a few miles towards Holbrook, Holtsville, Patchogue, and Farmingville, I thought of the other peaks I've reached and promontories I've stood on in my life.
In 2005 and 2006, in the midst of college, as a 20-21 year old mired in self-discovery, I would run to a promontory jutting out onto the gracefully flowing White Clay Creek, amid the White Clay Creek State Park in Delaware. There I would sit and surround myself with the mellifluous sounds of a trout stream cascading around lands empty but to other nature-seekers like myself and the park's own natural inhabitants. After a few seasons completing this run, my time on the promontory led to my acquiring Lyme's disease from a deer tick, so I decided to do away with running to the promontory, and instead ran to state borders (Delaware borders two within running distance to campus), which provided momentary excitement but not nearly the same cathartic effect.
2007 was a transition year for me; I moved back home from Delaware, started working at the snack shack at the Babylon village pool (where I would often have my cathartic moments watching the sun set on the ethereal Great South Bay, surrounded by fried oil and grease wafting in my face), and got a full-time job teaching at Sachem.
In 2008, I drove cross country , where I experienced two moments of catharsis: the first, during an early-morning half-hungover run to Lake Michigan in Chicago, one of America's beautiful skylines behind me and its most delicate of lakes reflecting that skyline in front of me.
The other moment was an earlier morning, more-westerly, less-hungover walk in the heart-stealing expanse of blue skies and mountains, the great city of Bozeman, Montana. Here, looking towards the mountains in the distance, I was overcome by the size and glory of this land, and I realized I would strive to continue conquering it.
Now many years later from these separate cathartic revelations, I am at a precipice yet again, ready to move on and climb upward in my mountainous life. Until I get to my next precipice, my next apex, promontory or peak, I am content to be where I am, watching the sunset surrounding me, reflecting on where I have been and where I am going.
Robert Pirsig put it best: “You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.”
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