Joy in Unexpected Places

I'm in night owl efficiency mode and cannot seem to power down.

This makes me simultaneously long for my college schedule and dread what it will be like to wake up tomorrow at 5:30am.

Here's hoping this catharsis crap I've been teaching my kids about helps me too. (P.S. Tim O'Brien, thanks for writing The Things They Carried. You've helped my kids remember that they actually love reading.)

This past week was ... eventful.

On Monday in Wonderland, we were informed that an impending performance evaluation had been officially rescheduled ... for this coming Thursday.

Almost immediately I felt overwhelmed by a quick flood of energy that has to be what a chicken feels like in those few, creepy moments when it runs around after it's head has been cut off.

I've actually seen what that looks like, by the way. I have legit empirical basis for such claims. (#Tanzania2012, Making Dinner, Day 3. See below)


       

I should have slept more, paced out my grad work and grading more efficiently, thought more about my long game before I decided to speak, and used fewer words when I did open my mouth. That probably would have helped me last week.

But I didn't and I couldn't and I tried too hard to get too much done, per usual. I didn't check my vernacular or my ego or my is-this-battle-worth-it meter nearly as conscientiously as I should have.

And karma subsequently bit me in the butt.

Hard.

Then it eviscerated any sense of security and confidence I had been desperately trying to nurture after a few carefully planned stratagems were successfully implemented.

I was nearly vibrating in response to unexpected and unpleasant intensity when one of my senior students came into my office and told me that she had been accepted to Columbia University's Class of 2020.

Of course I promptly squealed and we hugged and immediately started talking about awesome professors and courses she should look into.

This student's visit could not have been more perfect timing, for as my mentor reminded me, these moments are why we stay dedicated to the work.

I want to get back to the way I ordered my mind in the beginning of my seemingly interminable stay in the Palace of Doom.


I think fondly back to those early summer days, when I used to go back to Africa in my head.

It was a joy to relive each Tanzanian sunrise, to feel the weight of Herman Hesse's Siddartha in my lap again, to listen to the insects and birds stir into consciousness just as the local mosque called its faithful to morning prayers.


When arrogance and competitiveness were rearing their ugly heads again, I would revisit the moment when I first learned that the Swahili language has no possessive pronouns.

There's no need for them, because the society I saw was genuinely collective and collaborative. Despite hundreds of years of colonizing efforts and attempts to quash what makes them unique, individual tribes like the Masai continue to move through life exactly the way they want to.

Those chickens from before, incidentally, were a gift from the village leader, because he knew my friends and I wouldn't necessarily get access to a protein source otherwise.

Two years ago, I could revisit every show I'd ever performed by conjuring up the Musical Theater West, Met Opera, or Norwegian Sun stages. There was something profoundly meditative in my attempts to walk through all the blocking, dancing, lyrics, lines, and costume changes in my head, starting over anytime I detected a gap in my memory.

Every time I walked through the wings of those memories, I could feel that I had found a way to get a genuine smile on my face. It emboldened me in my battle against inevitable atrophy of the brain and made me slightly more confident that the Palace of Doom wasn't actually driving me insane.

As I sit now in the quaint little Harlem studio that I get to call mine and only mine, I'm realizing it will take a lot of work to pull back what used to be vivid details of all those powerful memories, but for my continued well-being, it's time to start.

Weekly Round Up of Lovely Things:

Yesterday, I had dinner at ABC Cocina with the gorgeous creature who does my hair when I'm back home in LA, with her long term boyfriend, and with the new little life growing inside of her. It was pretty incredible to eat delicious food and listen to two kind, creative people make plans for the child that is five or six months away from it's first moments in this world. They're going to be great parents.



A brisk walk, a glass of Rose, and thirty minutes later, I was sitting down to snacks and drinks with two dear friends. Talking to them was like an luxurious spa package of emotional support, work advice, and insightful political commentary. Mmmm.

It was a long night, though, and things did not bode well when I woke up to 36 degrees, wind chill, and a nasty hangover (damn you, bubbly!).

Still went outside, though, because I am actively trying to be more social.

After all, I had confirmed plans for coffee with an old friend in the West Village, I hate cancelling, and no amount of poor life choices, dehydration headaches, schizoid weather or free streaming of Starz' Outlander was going to change my mind.

(Sidebar: I'm so bad with directions down there. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE GRID?! Why can't we just have kept the grid!??! Seriously, urban planners, the grid around Central Park is quite easy to navigate and doesn't seem that hard to sustain, but whatever.)

Anyway, coffee turned into brunch, and brunch ran long.

Recently, this friend willingly volunteered his time to answer some of my students' questions about his work by video interview. My kids were enthralled, and I was grateful, but it was a pleasure to confirm in person that his core goodness - which I first noticed when we met in 2006 (eek! We were still using AIM then!) - had escaped the doldrums of millennial life relatively unscathed.

Corny as it sounds, our conversation gave me some real hope.

I do plan to devote my life to the pursuit of excellence in my work. But I also want to pursue excellence in my relationships with friends, family, an upright piano, a significant other, a dog, and maybe even with some tiny humans of my own.

As we were wrapping up several hours of stimulating conversation, which spanned traveling experiences to flying in fighter jets to great books and documentaries, I realized that the color of the wall of Cafe Minerva was almost the exact same pistachio we had scoured several home supply stores for in the fall of 2006.

(Our universities, though wonderful incubators for the human mind and spirit, were not particularly innovative when it came to dorm room decor.)

I'm not sure why I find the memory of that memory so comforting, but after seven hours of private tutoring, lesson planning, grading, and editing class footage, I have finally yawned.

The circadians suggest it's time to get some shut eye. Tomorrow's coming soon.

So I'm a school teacher now.

Despite significant time away,  I've decided to revisit my practice of writing out into the ether. I didn't realize it had been almost three years since my last post. For years, this blog contributed to the maintenance of my sanity during the dips of the roller coaster that was the odd life choice I made to try performing professionally. I'm really hoping that returning to blogging will do the same for me now, as I have now chosen to a new Wonderland: the world of public school education. I am promptly going gray. My hair is currently a very obvious artificial red - Ms. Frizzle status here I come - so that no one except my hair dresser and me know the extent of the early damage. I'm pretty sure I won't end up looking as good as President Obama still does after eight years, so I need to get better at managing the stress that comes along with the work. One day at a time. ~ 120 kids a year. Four months left of grad school. Summer. Hawaii. The light at the end of at least one tunnel is looking real glorious and bright right about now. In honor of St. Patrick’s day, a holiday near and dear to my relatives with Irish/Catholic roots, I spent too much time this morning endeavoring to write all my responses to a grad school task in proper limerick form. Really I was just trying to give myself some happy so that I could go Super Sayan on my grad work and kids' grades, both of which are due tomorrow at 9am. I had fun writing these limericks, while sitting next to a wonderful friend in a Starbucks on the UES, and doing my best to answer the question of a portion of the task, which was, "Have any major changes occurred in your teaching context that would impact your data?" Teaching is so fraught with challenges and unanticipated obstacles beyond a teacher's control that anyone who does the work on the reg knows that the answer to that question is either essentially OMG YES LET ME COUNT THE WAYS THAT EVERYTHING IS WAY HARDER THAN IT SHOULD BE. Or nope, not lately, crossing fingers real hard. Upon counsel from my esteemed parents, I am not submitting the limericks I wrote in my actual grad school assignment. I wish I could feel confident that my grad school professor would appreciate my sense of humor - especially since I just demonstrated proficiency in advance to pass out of a module called "Joy" - but previous experience has showed me that my desired outcome will be unlikely. I'm trying to learn empirically, y'all. (Incidentally, one dimension of this Wonderland of life where I sometimes spend my evenings has been affectionally deemed the Palace of Doom by a dear colleague. Hashtag #ofdoom is the most appropriate way to denote any references to this place for the modern era. The gate keepers of said Doom seem not to be fond of my style of humor... or most attributes of my personality, for that matter. I truly am sad about this, because in retrospect, I could have definitely made different choices that would have made my time in their Palace more ... palatable. Instead I did not. Again, I am learning a lesson the hard way - by choice. No good. At some point I should really figure out if salmon have to swim upstream to spawn, if so, why they've evolved to do that, and speculate whether or not its worth it to literally die slowly in pursuit of procreation. In Alaska, they're called zombie fish. Pretty fascinating stuff.)  Sooooo now I'm in the process of trying to learn how to feel like I'm maintaining my integrity while at the same time not fighting an uphill battle if I don't have to. It has not been easy. The thing is, the story of Sisyphus is very instructive. I have read it already. I should really tattoo this image on the inside of my eyelids and see if that would help me get better at fixing problems more effectively. Maybe I should just read it again, and then read it with my kids and see what they think about it. My dad says I should either a) change the people I spend time with or b) get a dog. Option a is not feasible where work is concerned, as I am not ready to leave the amazing tiny humans of my current placement. Option b is not feasible currently because I have no yard and as a public school teacher, I lack sufficient funds to pay for a dog sitter. Blergh. This post used to contain my silly limericks, in all their ridiculous AABBA glory. I really had fun writing them. And I love that at least three of my friends thought they were funny. Those limericks used to live here, but now they are the first part of a draft of my third book. Active working title "Wonderland - Volume 3". I don't think I'm a particularly good writer, so I've never finished writing a book. I did, however, finish an unnecessarily verbose thesis on how I could prove that writing is an effective mode of catharsis for coping with trauma, so I should - you know - follow my own darn advice at least. Writing is revising. Life can (should?) also be a constant process of self-revision. Working on it. So Ima do the one thing I really need to do more often: focus on the positive. Today, I met three people who were amazing.  One of them was a former screenplay editor who moved to New York to work for a production company that folded, so he's temporarily working at Starbucks. He had the best music taste of anyone I've met since Sunshine, one of the other teachers at my school.  I promptly followed him on Spotify, gave him my number, and now I am going to try to make a new friend. Update: He texted me and now he is in my phone as Best Music Man. We're currently having a text message conversation about all his favorite books. After breaking the ice over a conversation about protecting each other's computers, a brilliant - yes, despite his humility - brilliant active listener gave me an hour of his life - for free - to help me restructure the way I think, address problems, and communicate. Some might say that sounds like it would be an annoying experience, but it is what I need so much that it was the closest thing I have experienced to a godsend in many a while - maybe ever. It is soooo helpful to be humbled by someone else's intelligence, humility, and kindness. This man gave me more in one hour than I've gotten from a teacher in a long time. If every single one of my grad school professors had their own version of skill at this guy's level, we would experience an exponential increase in engagement potential and pedagogical efficacy of the fledgling teachers out there in the work force right now. How incredible that would be. I promptly told said brilliant listener man how much money I have saved, and how I want to develop a school in the next 5-10 years, and could I please have his contact information so that I could raise enough money to pay him for his consultations in the future.  Now I have his email (and his notes) and I am going to try to make him my friend too. Last but not least, a linguistics professor visiting from Germany asked me if I knew of any nearby jazz. You should have seen the joy that washed across my face, for I love jazz. I gave her several options, directions, the most economical metrocard package to buy, and my number in case she had any other questions while she's here. Take aways from today: 1. My parents are the smartest people I know. I need to listen to them all the time, because even when I disagree with them, I am the luckiest person in the world that they care enough about me to give me valuable advice and listen to my occasional (?) rants. 2. My friends are a constant source of inspiration. I am so so blessed that I can say I have had some friends for more than a decade now, and they still put up with me and love me despite all my complicated packaging. 3. I really want to learn Chinese and Arabic and become actually fluent in Spanish before I die. 4. I need to be more humble. And even if I don't feel like it, I need to be better at appearing to be humble. This is not the same thing as compromising my 'integrity". This is being smart. This is not coming off as arrogant when I am impatient or annoyed when other adults do not seem to understand what I am trying to communicate. This is me being more kind, because not all people are as excited to talk with me as my closest friends and most (?) of my students are. And that is ok. 5. I think I am pretty solid at writing fantastically sarcastic limericks. Who knew? I should take a creative writing class so that I have something else besides work or grad school to do. 6. I have got to take better care of myself.