Bittersweet was what it was. Finishing the spring concert and having to sign paperwork that condemns me to another year of close observation that I won’t receive is very bittersweet.

I’m thinking of how this year has been full of trial and full of worry and full of hatred of what I’ve gotten myself into and how I haven’t been able to pull myself out of it. Every attempt has faltered, every step has been weary. But all this is just exposition.

I stand before some two or three hundred people, holding my arms in the air, with many pairs of eyes on me, waiting for my next move, and I’m wondering why I’ve had to wait til the end, when it has really stopped mattering, to get the attention of these kids. It’s superficial at best, for as soon as this concert is over, they will go back to ignoring me. This, I know. Even while this is the best moment we will have, here together, making music, it is one a long time coming, and I wonder if it was worth it most days.

Having tried to keep my feet wrapped around the idea that I am here to learn and I have learned and so I am exactly where I need to be, I still find myself a little tear-struck when a bad day gets worse. I’ve taken to talking to my school mentor, a teacher designated to hear me out when I’m getting stressed and offer me some guidance. She is an ever-present ear and heart and I thanked her for being such at the concert. She told me that all my fighting with the kids paid off because the concert was the best she’d ever heard from this band. I nearly fell apart in front of her, in front of her husband and many other strangers.

I don’t know how I keep getting up in the morning. I don’t know how the singular thought, “the kids need to play today,” can possibly still keep me going. I’m feeling very woulda coulda lately, and thinking about how I’m gonna rectify my next year, but I signed a piece of paper saying that the “Schools” recognize that I need more help. My mother says that when she has to fire someone after their 90-day trial period, she feels she failed as a boss. I don’t think I’m getting that kind of sympathy from my own employers.

How can a principal that has observed me twice in the course of 181 days give an accurate judgment of my teaching ability? How can he say I haven’t done the things he’s asked me to, when in meeting after meeting he agreed that I was completing the requirements of my Professional Growth Plan? How can he tell me that parents complain about me and that justifies his actions, then tell me the parents have stopped complaining, and still ask me to resign.

I wish my own boss had been willing to help me. I don’t know how many times I told her I needed to meet on the weekend to go over some things that I need her opinion on, and she simply ignored me. Lazy has never been so uninviting. I can’t believe I’ve allowed myself to be part of it.

I’m not a violent person, but when I think about it too much, I want to punch a wall. I’m drowning in debt and bills, like everyone else, and now I will spend the next three months is mostly unemployed uncertainty while I try to find a job that will see me for what I can be, not for what I’m not.

*shakes head*

“There,” Yit said to himself, “that should do it.” Two large eyes glowing like light bulbs peeked out from behind the great steel dumpster in the alley. The fumes of rotting vegetable matter and meat by-product didn’t phase the sprite, who’s wings stuck out beyond what it considered a good hiding place. It grinned, hiccupped and waved one last hand at the hidden place. “And he said I couldn’t do it.”

Come November, no one even recognized this part of the city, Yit had done such a good job. He’d mangled brick and mortar, swirled steal into a pool of unusable mass. People commented it looked like someone had put a stick in the wall and gave it a good stirring until it was so mixed up you couldn’t tell one thing from another. And the twisting had spread out, down the walls of the alley, devouring everything in its path until the three surrounding buildings were mushy lumps on warped concrete and asphalt.

TV stations had never left the site. Daily, something new was falling off the building, slopping hard against the ground, and seeming to mold into the landscape from there. What people had noticed the strange manipulation of their homes and offices had left. Others, not so alert or fortunate, died in the wreckage. Police waited around the clock for something recognizable as a body part to emerge from the whirlpool stone so they could identify a body.

No one dared get close to it, but Yit, who visited regularly. Completely invisible to the normal human, the tiny fairy would spring back and forth, collecting the odd bit of jewelry or cookware that would crop up. It amazed him what sort of coin he could fetch for real clay pots and zirconium back home. And if it hadn’t been for Leadwick, he’d never have been up to the task. He was always reminding himself to thank him, but never got around to it. Too much to do, he always justified.

It was years later, after the twisting had settled down that the Venice Beach riots stopped after a barbell golem smashed up seven unsuspecting muscle-bound protesters. And after that came the death of Ms. Hattie Shaw. Autopsy showed she’d been turned into a denim rag doll. Her family was inconsolable, and the lawsuit against the nursing home is still heavily mediated.

Yit took stock of all this, and smiled. Not often a small nether creature gets to stir up actual trouble for the humans who long stopped believing in them. He wondered if all this carnage would make them reconsider, but stopped as soon as he remembered what he’d already done to his own countrymen.

The following is a little abomination that crept out of my fingers the other day when I decided to do a little writing. I apologize in advance.

~ ~ ~

Hernan crammed notebooks, digital recorders, blank discs and his laptop into the fine suede bag he used as a briefcase. Hurried breathes beat out of his mouth as he scrambled to pack a larger matching bag with enough clothes that he calculated would manage for two weeks with minimal time in a Laundromat. Nothing came to mind when he tried to parse out what he might be forgetting, and with that, he bolted the front door of his apartment and sped down the hallway to the elevator.

He mashed the button repeatedly, knowing that it both wouldn’t make the elevator move any faster and wouldn’t ease his sense of urgency to leave town as quickly as possible. In due time, addled and frustrated, Hernan climbed aboard the empty car, his arms full of luggage.

He considered whether he should call into work before he left. Not one for long term, or really any, kind of absence from the rigorous seven to seven work schedule he’d maintained since the end of his internship some six years ago, Hernan determined that it would be highly irresponsible to disappear from a place where he’d been so present. Though, short reflection helped him change his mind. Daily, he entered the research and conference rooms at the University library at 7am, creeping over tomes of mid-19^th century journals, government reports and industrial reviews, then teach a class in the classroom two floors below him to a small collection of undergraduate students who needed to fulfill a humanities credit with 19^th Century Music and Dance History. Hernan purported he knew nothing catastrophic on the subject, but agreed to continue teaching it to continue his research. The university paid him little, and he expected as much in return. However, they had left him be, with only two sections to teach, one in the morning, one at night, with all the time in the world on either side of the classes to devour the contents of the library.

Until just now, just moments before he’d climbed on this elevator, it had all been for naught. No progress, no discovery. Nothing spectacular to further the initial reason why he began his study. Tome after tome he could pour through, only to discover what so many scholars had discovered before.

Hernan clutched his bag tightly as the last few years replayed in his head. The elevator doors opened into a dimly lit concrete hall lined with black doors, leading out into the back parking garage. He clutched his bag as tight as a mother in danger clutches her baby and runs. Hernan ran, jamming his shoulder against the contrary door at the end of the hall, taking a sharp stab from the corner of his suitcase in his ribs. The open light of day blinded him temporarily as he fell through the door, dropping his bags. Notebooks had spilled on the ground. He picked them up one by one, examining them to be sure they were all intact.

Some of the notebooks were his: personal notes on the things he’d found. The vast majority of the hundred or so he’d managed to smuggle from the library archives belonged to a James T. Coldridge and a Felicia Vanderburg. Each contained detailed daily entries dating as far back as 1832, before the first gas powered vehicle showed up in Savannah, Georgia. A marvel at the time, befuddling many.

The journals, extensive in their explanation of a plan to reformulate the distribution of technology over the next 150-years, did little to qualm Hernan’s research into why no one, no institution, no foundation or scholar, could pin point an inventor, developer or discoverer for any major technological stride in the time since the journals had first been written. Coldridge’s and Vanderburg’s scrawling black lines on what looked to be seemingly ancient paper with modern paperback covers perplexed Hernan immediately upon finding them. However, the words inside gave way to an underground government plot and far superior technology to anything he’d witnessed in his time on earth. He barely understood most of the jargon in the books.

Hernan tossed his bags in the back car seat, slamming the door, climbing in and jamming the key in the ignition. The faint sense of betrayal crept over him as he drove his car, completely devoid of origin point in its creation, out onto the godless freeway.

Just had a very long conversation with a guy trying to convince me that, while Christians aren’t so bad, Muslims are to be deplored outright. He claims that any Westerner who reads the Qu’ran would feel the same.

I’m thinking about how blind some people can be to so many things. We all try to be very fluffy-bunny about so many things, trying to make everyone comfortable, that we often forget to think for ourselves. I’m as guilty of this as anyone. I want to form opinions based in fact, in knowledge, not in intuition and gossip.

This guy obviously has done his homework and obviously has gone about expressing his ideas as best he can. Huzzah for him. However, I didn’t appreciate him trying to subtly, and somewhat not so subtly, make me hate Muslims too. It’s not that I think he’s wrong or right. It’s not that I don’t agree with some of his thoughts. It’s more that I don’t think I possess the patience and brain power to think as hard about the things I hate as this guy does.

He advocates spreading the word that Muslims should be publicly shunned and that he would not offer aid to a Muslim in need. He has put a lot of thought into this. I don’t know if I want to be around a person so hateful.

Again, I’m lifting this off of Chili with uncanny stealth and the daft hands of a carpenter. Don’t worry, I’ll give the hands back when I’m done with them.

It’s the Page 123 meme! Rules!
1. Thou shalt grabeth what book lay first before you. Be it from yon shelf or from yon field, take it up and brandish it with holy fire.
2. Thou shalt find the one hundredth and twenty-third page. Seek it out like a lamb seeks its mother.
3. I say unto you, thou must then center your heart upon the sentence numbered five and relish those three sentences following it. Let there only be three sentences, and for each one, let you write it down. Also for each sentence, raise an altar to the most holy and demonstrate upon it devotion to ideals most divine.
4. Amen.

So, from the Vampire: the Requiem role playing source book:
“Likewise, any objects found during the wraithly endeavor cannot be manipulated or return with the character when she finally rejoins her physical body.

A projecting vampire can potentially be barred mystically from returning to her body, or she might become lost and incapable of finding her body again. Rumors also speak of other spirits that can enter a vampire’s vacant body, stranding the Kindred as a ghost body.”

And to sidle-up along Chili’s side, I’ll just say that, if you want to take this one, take it. Don’t let me stop you from a good time. That would just be rude of me.

Was it the auto-locking feature on the Spacer helmet
Or the self-recharging oxygen tank that we wanted so badly
From the Five and Dime?

Something about these antique wonders, full of future dreams
From a time when the future was as far away as Jupiter.
I’m still on Ganymede, these days.

Remember when we used to load our family’s freight cruiser down
With all the Earth rocks that managed to get scattered outside your house
Back on near Mount Olympus?

Remember how bright that red soil looked when the sun came up?
I see it clear in my mind: the long fields of hydrophonous vegetables,
Your uncle’s pasture full of bovinates?

My mother is sick. She’s been diagnosed with Yan’gh lymphoma.
She has six months on the outside, but the doctors told her
She will still be able to go on space walks outside Jefferson Station.

Long nights are the usual here on Ganymede, but you knew that.
You lived here for seven years before you moved away again.
I knew you lived here, and I kept meaning to come say hi.

It just broke my heart to know what you’d been doing all this time.
And I still don’t forgive myself for what happened to your brother.
Stay hydrated out there. I hear it gets harder and harder every month.

I got to meet him. He’s adorable. But I’ll let you judge for yourself.

Now that that’s out of the way, I may have to admit my desire for a child soon, though I’m sure how genuine it is yet. I’ll keep

Shamelessly stolen from Mrs. Chili. Go show her love. Now.

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each blogger answers the questions about themselves.
3. Something about tagging other bloggers (but you all know how I feel about tagging. Feel free to boost, however…)
[P.S.- That's Chili's note there. I'm gonna tag some people now: Firewings, Button, Strangerandstranger, kc, and anyone else that's commented on my site in the last month. That's right you!]
***
What I was doing 10 years ago:

Ten years ago, this month, I was enjoying playing Bari Sax in my junior high Varsity band. We were playing Havendance, by David Holsinger, which was one of my favorite band pieces for a very long time. I was also courting a young compulsive liar named Cassandra who looked remarkably like Alanis Morrisette. Seriously, it was surreal. Even had the long hair.

Five Snacks I would enjoy in a perfect, non weight-gaining world (Chili’s [and Derek's] note; pshaw! I enjoy these in THIS world!)

1. Chocolate chip cookie dough…not the ice cream, not for the squeamish.
2. Girl Scout Thin Mints
3. Buttered Toast
4. Chocolate ice cream
5. Brownies, no icing, no nuts.
[Note: I have removed a redundant part of the survey here regarding what foods I would eat in the real world. See above for explanation.]

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

1. Move to Europe
2. Not work, go get degrees in obscure branches of knowledge for the rest of my life
3. Buy a golden retriever
4. Donate a large sum of money yearly to a foundation dedicated to curing an incurable illness. Really, why hasn’t anyone does this?
5. Pay off my loans.

Five jobs that I have had:

1. Dishwasher
2. Receptionist/Classified Ad-taker
3. Odor tester
4. Private lesson instructor
5. Teacher

Three of my habits:

1. Severe anal-retentiveness followed by apathy
2. Peeling off my toe nails
3. Singing in public

Five place I have traveled (I changed this question - it originally read “five places I’ve lived” but that’s not very exciting, since I’ve never lived more than about 70 miles from where I was born [ditto])

1. Orlando, Florida
2. San Bernadino, California
3. Williamsburg, Virginia
4. Stillwater, Oklahoma
5. Huntsville, Texas

(I added this question) Five things that can be found in/on my bedside table:

1. A book, always. Always.
2. A highligher
3. A small notepad for those last minute nighttime thoughts, as well as dreams.
4. This awesome lip and gum cream I got in the hospital
5. Remote to my stereo which is the oldest and most reliable appliance I own.

One hand on melting keyboard
One hand on melting keyboard
Behind a pane, one eye on the road

Reach back for air, reach back for air
Hands above head, come on reach. Reach!
Breathe in, take it in like aqueous breach

One hand on melting keyboard

Far fewer days when sunlight gives way to wind
Far fewer days when barometers threaten cracked skin
Far fewer days left to lock myself in

One hand on melting keyboard

The lint in my pocket is as gray as dust
The lint in my pocket is as gray as dust
And all the dust in my windowsill, rust

One hand, one hand on melting keyboard

The cracks in the paint smell hot with faith
Living above my carpet, the wraith
I put on my shoes to stay safe

Seven o’clock, the sun will not wait
Eight o’clock, the sun will not wait
My eyes go bad while the sun migrates

One hand on melting keyboard
One hand on melting keyboard
One eye on the closing blinds
One eye on the closing blinds