Grounding
” . . .but my Muse, she speaks to me in words so soft that I cannot sleep, and they’re all that I need when she allows me to breathe in life and love before she comes to me over the hills and upon on the mountains: around them she speaks to me and I cannot sleep.”
He Still Speaks Through Dreams
I am writing this so I will remember, being prone to forget.
Being at Camp, but not at Camp. Talking to a non-camp person, a student, who is crying. Learning the problem. Not giving a solution, just listening, until we part ways in the woods.
Waking, confused. Praying, for how to proceed with this person in real life. Getting an answer. Acting.
Talking in real life. Seeing real tears. My confusion was not hers. What made no sense to me was the heart of the matter. Camp, but not camp.
Humbled, awed, and slightly disappointed at feeling those emotions. I know better.
Why would He stop speaking through dreams?
To A Friend
I write about God like you write about your mother:
there is anger, confusion, frustration and anxiety,
all fueled by love.
Tired
I must be losing it, somewhere, somehow. I used to teach from 7am to 3pm. Everyday. Sometimes without a lunch break or a plan period. And even when I had one, my kids were there, or my colleges, or there was a meeting, or something. I was around people all the time, on my feet, talking, teaching, doing, going, going, going. That’s hardly the case now.
Yes, I teach more classes on average professor on campus - outside of the Ed Dept, where we believe in never saying “no”, all being former workers in public education - and I travel around the region from school to school doing observations, but still, this all feels like far less teaching than I used to do. Yes, I have classes that stretch from 1 hour and 10 minutes, to 8 hours straight, including Saturday s, but on a weekly ave, I teach considerably less than I once did.
I teach less, grade less, and spend less time in front of people, but have never been this tired as often at the end of a day.
Maybe therein lies the harsh reality. I’m an introverted succubus: I feed of the interactions I once had. I was energized by standing, running, hoping, jumping in front of a class of 30 high school students unlocking the mystery of some novel, short story or poem, arguing over the best of all possible worlds theory or virtue ethics, but now, I spend way too much time sitting down, at a desk, in a car, in front of grad students.
Maybe this is why I have a hard time saying no. Why I add classes outside of my current content area, adding to my stress: it allows me more time to interact with students. More time to make connections, getting to know people. Why I keep saying yes to leading groups, judging contests, speaking for groups and to individuals when asked. Maybe I miss the daily in-your-faceness of my previous job, when I saw my kids every single day, not once or twice a week. When following up with someone was easily accomplished in a hallway or at the door, instead of through email or running into them on campus. When my office was my classroom, not a space separate from all other normal, daily interactions: somewhere not officially labeled. Maybe this tiredness is from feeling sedentary. Possibly stagnant.
Or maybe I’m just getting old.
A Promise (maybe)
I’m a writer. Or at least that’s what it says inside my underwear.
Sartre, who is not the father of existentialism, talks about “bad faith”, about going through the motions that a the definition of a thing. About conforming to an image, a list, a set of principles inauthentically, unauthentically, non-authentically. Something like that. In short, “I am, because that’s what the list says I am.” Fitting in, instead of creating self. And gross oversimplification though this may be, in the end he says this is bad.
But what is a writer who doesn’t write?
Jeanine Hathaway wrote in her wonderful book Motherhouse “I feel the least whole when I couldn’t create, that is, I cannot image anything being different.”
I’m not whole.
Taking a page from the mouth of babes, or at least a former student, I will write, something, everyday.
I don’t promise it will be as profound as other things I have posted in the past, or even intelligible at times, but it will be something. The world does not revolve around Facebook notes.
Maybe an entry will only reflect on the boy who stood, alone, in chapel, whenever the Bible is read. But that will be enough.
I can imagine things being different.
And will, once again.
I am a writer, as more than my inseam will know.