And when we die we say we'll catch some blackbird's wing
and we will fly away together
come some sweet Bluebonnet spring.
~Nanci Griffith
So I've done nothing for the past month but read page after page of women writing about their gardens in colonial Australia and it is starting to get to my head. Despite the fact that all these things make me itch and swell and drip, I adore flowers and trees and all manner of green things. I really think that God knew what she was doing when she plopped me down in my place in the world, but I think that I was cheated out of a functional set of sinuses.
It's that time of year in South Carolina when daffodils start peeking out of the ground and the buds on the trees get red and swollen causing a the bare branches to have a pinkish tint from a distance. My birthday at the end of February is usually winter's last stand. Spring tends to be short in the south, turning into green (or brown depending on the year) fairly quickly. As much as I love the south in the springtime, it doesn't really have the potency of spring in the north. I remember this from my time in New York, fighting back tears to see clusters of crocus in the corner of my yard and little white flowers bursting out on the cherry trees in mid-April. I remember the horrible frustration of March (and to some extent April), which is an undeniably spring month in South Carolina and are most definitely not in New York (or, I fear, Chicago). But then, when the wait was over, you could feel the joy in the air as people chucked their gloves and mittens and sprawled out on the lawns.
Until recently, I'd never thought about how Lent usually coincides with March here. In SC, people get all decked out in their pastels and while sandals and lace, because Spring is in full bloom and the temperature is nearly always in the 70s every day by then. The anticipation is gone. But here, by early April, the world is only just starting to thaw out. After months of cold and gray, the world has become wet and fragrant and bright again. Life becomes possible again. How appropriate.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
As usual...
good intentions only get you so far. If I recall correctly, I did say that I would write a little every day, not "blog" a little every day. I have certainly been writing...blogging, not so much.
I pulled my first "all nighter" since writing my senior project at Bard four years ago. I don't do well without sleep. I realize that none of us do well without sleep, but I've always been that way, even as a kid. I get nauseous and dizzy and panicky when I don't sleep. And I tend to cry a lot. I guess I just never grew out of the toddler stage. I don't need uninterrupted sleep, but altogether, I need about 7 or 8 hours to remain functional. I had to finish my draft of my seminar paper and send it out by 7 am. I had been reading/writing nonstop for a solid ten days, making up for all the procrastination I've done over this quarter. I've been eating, sleeping, and breathing the Australian garden (better than some things, but it does get old after a while). I only started writing on Friday, and by this morning I had 50 or so pages in a reasonable state. I do write rather quickly, but getting to the point where I feel equipped to write is so difficult. I still have a stack of 19th century settler narratives awaiting my attention in Google Books (the 19th century researcher's absolute best friend), and yet you have to punch yourself in the face and some point and stop reading and stop writing. I just never want to let go of what I might be missing. And because of this personal flaw, I tend to put myself in dangerously last-minute situations. ANd lose a lot of sleep.
Although, there is something to say about being able to watch the sun come up. I'm an old granny, so I'm never out until 5 am partying, so there are very few times when I see twilight. I used to see amazing sunrises on my hour-long commute to W-O High (and sunsets, come to think of it, on the way back), but never the early hours of dawn. In fact, I associate dawn with the road trips of my childhood, the groggy-eyed trek from the house to the car into the cold, wet, silent morning. Tired excitement. And this morning, I heard something truly beautiful, the chirping of spring birds on my porch. They reminded me of home. I know there are birds in every place, but I just have this really visceral memory of waking up in the mornings, the sun pouring in through my window which faced our backyard. There was a wisteria growing right by the window and the birds would just hang out there and twitter away. I remember, even as a preoccupied adolescent, soaking in that sound and that light and knowing that it didn't get much better than that.
And then I began to think about my home and how I don't know if I'll ever not be a little homesick for my patch of dirt in Liberty, South Carolina. I'm writing right now about the domestic outdoor spaces of colonial australia, primarily the garden, and about how people built palaces of memory upon these spaces in attempt to reconcile themselves with an alien landscape far away from their families. And as the birds made me yearn for home, I realized that this kind of attachment to place is not always a given. I've lived in the same house on the same property for my entire life. That dirt is my home. Those trees are my home. The smell of our house and the smells outside are mine. I know our yard like the back of my hand. I know where the old fire pit used to be. I know where the peach trees were. I know the exact spot where my mother once chopped up a pregnant copperhead. I know where my sister and I reenacted Bridge to Terabithia and where we set up a veterinarian clinic for our imaginary injured critters. I know where we buried our dogs. My body knows exactly how long it takes to travel the gravel drive to the house.
I know that when I get out of the car after coming home from wherever it is that I've been something just feels right. I can rest easy there. That is my place. The country of my skull.
I pulled my first "all nighter" since writing my senior project at Bard four years ago. I don't do well without sleep. I realize that none of us do well without sleep, but I've always been that way, even as a kid. I get nauseous and dizzy and panicky when I don't sleep. And I tend to cry a lot. I guess I just never grew out of the toddler stage. I don't need uninterrupted sleep, but altogether, I need about 7 or 8 hours to remain functional. I had to finish my draft of my seminar paper and send it out by 7 am. I had been reading/writing nonstop for a solid ten days, making up for all the procrastination I've done over this quarter. I've been eating, sleeping, and breathing the Australian garden (better than some things, but it does get old after a while). I only started writing on Friday, and by this morning I had 50 or so pages in a reasonable state. I do write rather quickly, but getting to the point where I feel equipped to write is so difficult. I still have a stack of 19th century settler narratives awaiting my attention in Google Books (the 19th century researcher's absolute best friend), and yet you have to punch yourself in the face and some point and stop reading and stop writing. I just never want to let go of what I might be missing. And because of this personal flaw, I tend to put myself in dangerously last-minute situations. ANd lose a lot of sleep.
Although, there is something to say about being able to watch the sun come up. I'm an old granny, so I'm never out until 5 am partying, so there are very few times when I see twilight. I used to see amazing sunrises on my hour-long commute to W-O High (and sunsets, come to think of it, on the way back), but never the early hours of dawn. In fact, I associate dawn with the road trips of my childhood, the groggy-eyed trek from the house to the car into the cold, wet, silent morning. Tired excitement. And this morning, I heard something truly beautiful, the chirping of spring birds on my porch. They reminded me of home. I know there are birds in every place, but I just have this really visceral memory of waking up in the mornings, the sun pouring in through my window which faced our backyard. There was a wisteria growing right by the window and the birds would just hang out there and twitter away. I remember, even as a preoccupied adolescent, soaking in that sound and that light and knowing that it didn't get much better than that.
And then I began to think about my home and how I don't know if I'll ever not be a little homesick for my patch of dirt in Liberty, South Carolina. I'm writing right now about the domestic outdoor spaces of colonial australia, primarily the garden, and about how people built palaces of memory upon these spaces in attempt to reconcile themselves with an alien landscape far away from their families. And as the birds made me yearn for home, I realized that this kind of attachment to place is not always a given. I've lived in the same house on the same property for my entire life. That dirt is my home. Those trees are my home. The smell of our house and the smells outside are mine. I know our yard like the back of my hand. I know where the old fire pit used to be. I know where the peach trees were. I know the exact spot where my mother once chopped up a pregnant copperhead. I know where my sister and I reenacted Bridge to Terabithia and where we set up a veterinarian clinic for our imaginary injured critters. I know where we buried our dogs. My body knows exactly how long it takes to travel the gravel drive to the house.
I know that when I get out of the car after coming home from wherever it is that I've been something just feels right. I can rest easy there. That is my place. The country of my skull.
Monday, March 01, 2010
The Halcyon Days of Hormones
"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater." ~Gail Godwin
Listen to me, children. If a teacher ever tells you that they don't have favorites, they are lying. We may not "pick" favorites, but there are some kids that will just weasel their way into our hearts, and you might be surprised to learn that it isn't just the smart, polite, helpful kids (thought this is a good start) but some of the troubled, smart-ass, belligerent ones too. But we have favorites, whether we want to or not.
I suppose that it is human nature to want whatever it is that we don't have. My last year teaching, I wanted so bad to be back in school, to continue this journey, to postpone my adulthood, to bury myself in my own bizarre interests. There I was finally getting better at teaching, and I was yearning for the outside, to shrug off that responsibility. And now I'm here, indulging in this wild world of academia, and I miss my kids. I won't go so far as to say that I miss the Rickys, Johns, and Dillons (if any of my teacher friends are reading this, you know exactly why), but the inclination is there. Even the Rickys, Johns, and Dillons, crazy as they made me, won me over on some strange level. They may have made me pull my hair out and drive home crying my eyes out, but I loved them. I wanted better of them, and better for them.
And then on the opposite end, we have my sweet (if hyper) Drama kids who made my life a little bit easier every day with their eagerness and silliness and angst. What a strange little lovely dance we all had. And we have all those in between. The quiet ones, the distracted ones, the stubborn ones, the indifferent ones, the giggly ones, the smelly ones, the loud ones, the timid ones, the mean ones, the gentle ones.
But I had favorites, no doubt about it.
There was Esaw (not his real name, but it was a similar unintentional misspelling of a biblical names) who couldn't read or write a coherent sentence if his life depended on it. He was a volunteer fire fighter and was sweet as he could be as long as you didn't ask him to read anything outloud. He would have chewed off his right arm if I had asked him too, but I knew better than to ask him to read anything. One day he brought a wounded bird to school with him, trying to nurse it back to health. This is a kid who had shot and ate just about every critter in Oconee County, but he was just fretting over this little bird. He left it in my classroom while he went to lunch, and told me emphatically,"If anybody touches that bird, you just tell me and a will whoop 'em good." The bird died during third period, and he came up to me as I was reading out loud from The Bean Trees, interrupted me and said: "Ma'am, my bird done died. Can I go outside and bury it." And God bless him, he did.
There are so many others. I miss the adventure of teaching. I miss the small, rare successes. I miss the exasperation. I miss looking into the turbulent faces of adolescence. Weird, huh?
Listen to me, children. If a teacher ever tells you that they don't have favorites, they are lying. We may not "pick" favorites, but there are some kids that will just weasel their way into our hearts, and you might be surprised to learn that it isn't just the smart, polite, helpful kids (thought this is a good start) but some of the troubled, smart-ass, belligerent ones too. But we have favorites, whether we want to or not.
I suppose that it is human nature to want whatever it is that we don't have. My last year teaching, I wanted so bad to be back in school, to continue this journey, to postpone my adulthood, to bury myself in my own bizarre interests. There I was finally getting better at teaching, and I was yearning for the outside, to shrug off that responsibility. And now I'm here, indulging in this wild world of academia, and I miss my kids. I won't go so far as to say that I miss the Rickys, Johns, and Dillons (if any of my teacher friends are reading this, you know exactly why), but the inclination is there. Even the Rickys, Johns, and Dillons, crazy as they made me, won me over on some strange level. They may have made me pull my hair out and drive home crying my eyes out, but I loved them. I wanted better of them, and better for them.
And then on the opposite end, we have my sweet (if hyper) Drama kids who made my life a little bit easier every day with their eagerness and silliness and angst. What a strange little lovely dance we all had. And we have all those in between. The quiet ones, the distracted ones, the stubborn ones, the indifferent ones, the giggly ones, the smelly ones, the loud ones, the timid ones, the mean ones, the gentle ones.
But I had favorites, no doubt about it.
There was Esaw (not his real name, but it was a similar unintentional misspelling of a biblical names) who couldn't read or write a coherent sentence if his life depended on it. He was a volunteer fire fighter and was sweet as he could be as long as you didn't ask him to read anything outloud. He would have chewed off his right arm if I had asked him too, but I knew better than to ask him to read anything. One day he brought a wounded bird to school with him, trying to nurse it back to health. This is a kid who had shot and ate just about every critter in Oconee County, but he was just fretting over this little bird. He left it in my classroom while he went to lunch, and told me emphatically,"If anybody touches that bird, you just tell me and a will whoop 'em good." The bird died during third period, and he came up to me as I was reading out loud from The Bean Trees, interrupted me and said: "Ma'am, my bird done died. Can I go outside and bury it." And God bless him, he did.
There are so many others. I miss the adventure of teaching. I miss the small, rare successes. I miss the exasperation. I miss looking into the turbulent faces of adolescence. Weird, huh?
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