Friday:
Today is a big ole workshop session. Lots of talking, lots of listening. I liked it, except the movie making session at the end of the day. Not much use for me, and I was tired. However, the True Colors lesson was good. True Colors is a personality profiling system from the 70s that uses 4 colors to explain personality in many ways: orange, gold, green, and blue. Look it up, its fun! The Thinking Map workshop was interesting, as I learned how to use this mysterious and ominous classroom tool in a way I didn’t know was possible. Take that, previous professors who taught me nothing up until now! The class on working with students with disabilities was intersting, though, I’d have to say a bit boring. Luckily it was early, and I didn’t know any better then. Also, I figured out how to make a horse look like it was jumping without folding or tearing it. Who knew?!

After the workshop, I go home, and start wilding packing lots of things. We had planned on doing the Mage game that night, but H decided he couldn’t play, so we didn’t. After cramming lots of stuff in my car three times, then moving it to the new apartment, I got really tired, and tried to call the electric company. They told me that the previous tenant of my new place had had his power disconnected because he didn’t pay. My manager confirms this: “I had evict the sunuvabitch!” They then told me that I had to get a copy of the lease, fax it to the Credit Department, and wait for them to approve me, then they would send the order down here, and we then would have to wait another 4 days to get power. So, we go and get the lease, signed and paid for. Manager tells us to move on in, and so we do. Luckily, I still had furniture over at the old place. We go up to town, use the fax machine at a hotel and manage to get it through after 30 min. Tired, hungry, and not quite ready for Saturday, I go to bed.

Saturday:
Moving Day! I get up around 10, and have my roomie arrange to get a truck for us to move our stuff. Then we move our stuff. It only takes an hour-and-a-half, but we’re both tired when we get it done. We spend the rest of the day trying to arrange the apartment under hopes from Manager that they’ll “have the power on tonight or early tomorrow.” Yes, I know that means someone was gonna work on a Sunday. I’m dumb to believe him. We screwed around for the rest of the evening and eventually collapsed around 10pm, and I shivered my ass off. Bad mood, bad move.

Sunday:
Luckily, G is awake down the way, and I join her around 9am for cheerios and heat. We sit and do nothing most of the morning, then A came over, and we went and got breakfast at McCardboard. Then it was off to Hastings and a general big day of loafing around. No playing Mage today, of course, cause A’s when he has to work, so we crashed around 10pm.

Monday:
I wake up at 6.30am to go over to the old place and get a shower. Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten that I took the shower curtain to the new place, so I got to have fun cleaning the bathroom floor at 7am. Get coffee and prepare for another glorious day of meetings. This one was hell. We sit in the same chair all day long, in the same room, and listen to the same old guy talk about what we aren’t supposed to do during our student teaching. One lively discussion on religion and freedom of speech in the classroom, but other than that, I wanted to die. I leave there tired, cranky, hungry, and then discover that we still have no power, my iPod dies (trecherous since I’m making an 8 hour trip to east TX this weekend), I’m cold, my phone is dead, and I can’t find my friends. After scrounging up electric current at the library, I get hold of them, go to dinner with G’s folks, then home again home again jiggity-jig to watch the Covenant with my TV in G’s apartment. Yay for friends who are also bored.

Manager says he’s sorry about the power. Electric company says that we’ll have power in less than 24 hours. I still have to teach in the morning, and I’m considering heavily the merits of not bathing tomorrow. Luckily, I’m too lazy to get sweaty-stinky.

It was a westerly wind that blew love away.
Like ticker-tape news stories
   and flash photography
It was gone before noticed, and
   each case and circumstance
   gone unnoticed.

Spring didn’t falter (summer either)
For it was too sudden to make a dent in the cycle.
No storm
   no brewing doom
   no staggering wind
The westerly wind was merely an
   under-exaggerated breeze,
Blowing too fast, too hard
   to move a hair on a head.

Love was simply scooped
Glass encasements lifted to set it free
From every museum
Every museum that is a brain,
   a house,
   a park or letter.
And cut to the quick, we were,
   (we are)
Too fast to be yet bleeding.
But soon, I can imagine, they will say,
When they finally notice.

Soon, we will be bleeding.
Soon, love will return to heal us.

On they go, buying store imitations
   for the time, to hold them over.
These are the chili-dog loves.
They fill but have no meat,
   no sustenance
Past the hour and a half that they fill.
A flush, and off they go, again,
   to buy, and bide time.

Love packed in every corner,
   every happy face and
   shiny shrink-wrapped package.
Even in ice cream that they sell at the end of town.

There we sat,
   over ice cream
Each talking to the other,
   each listening in turns.

The conversations (intimate conversations)
   our hands had
   filled silence we’ve yet to notice.
A silence too cover up to hear.
Our words a quilted blanket,
   genuine in their own place,
   as long as not in hands.

We at our ice cream,
   each styrofoam cup filled with
   store-brand emotion,
   yet empty.
This is not love,
   but it looks like it.

Even while we make-out in parking lots,
   in apartments,
   sending tiny byte-sized letters
   over westerly winds
We know this isn’t love.

And maybe, one day
   equally unnoticed
The wind will change directions.

Or we’ll run out of love-flavored food.

No preservatives or artificial flavors
Zero grams of fat, trans fat removed
No sugar, no starch
No texture creamy goodness.

Maybe we’ll run out.

My student made a big deal today about the fact that there are gay people. She says it’s just wrong. “Two guys kissing is just gross.” I just told her it was none of her business. She didn’t get it, but she doesn’t get much that doesn’t relate to what she wants right at this moment.

Now, I’m sure most of you that read me on a regular basis feel the same way. It’s none of your business, and that gives you one less thing to worry about. It’s people like you I can appreciate. I’ve come to a place where I don’t like having to explain myself to others.

I remember in high school, and even in the beginnings of college, I had to answer the persistent questions about where, when, how, why the gay thing. It’s the funny part about becoming something more true: you have to be forced into a label. I’ve been the ‘gay friend, ‘THE gay guy,’ ‘gay saxophonist,’ and ‘gay.’ Difficult to manage, all these different roles is.

But, I suppose the cruel nature of things is that we play roles. We either serve as student or teacher, parent or child, brother or sister, friend or enemy, worker or employer to someone, somewhere. C’est la vie, I suppose.

In light of the melancholy that can come from such social structures, becoming “teacher” has had some high points. There are a couple students that have flocked to me, and its kinda cool that they come and talk to me after school. One in particular. He’s a very funny kid, and he always comes in with a “complaint” to make, though its usually nothing at all. He’s just fun.

So despite my kvitching, I do have good things happen. Making the change between stern and calm is getting easier, and more natural, and I think it helps the class along. Even the lesson I taught tonight was better than normal, but that’s because I made her work on her music the whole time.

Every day is a little transformation, and every day is a little growth. That’s what makes it all worthwhile, in a way, I guess.

There I was, sitting in the middle of my peers, listening to my virtuoso professor blare through an amazing program with great music. He’s phenomenal. I’m proud to have learned from him. The last couple weeks have been a sign that I’ve learned much, yet have so far to go. I quietly seethe at my own short-comings, quietly rejoice in those of my peers, who I’ve previously thought to be far better prepared for teaching.

Every day is a new lesson regarding my patience or severity, knowledge or willingness to learn, ability to stay in control or allow the students to pick their own pace. It’s difficult to say the least. More than one class, I’ve thought that I would be better suited to work fast food, and pray for the 45 minutes to be over. It’s never as long as I wish it were, because we have so much to do, yet it is so long that i often wonder if I won’t just completely cave and send both students to the office without proper reason.

And through all this uncertainty, I feel I am doing much better than I could be, and I have moments where I think that I’m doing the right things, both for me and the kids. I’m trying. Giving it the proper amount of elbow grease. I feel like I’m a teacher.

After school today, I found myself discussing with Meghann (the other student teacher) all of these things. And, because of our commonalities, we started discussing how tired we were of being on campus, around the people that was holding us down so many days. The drama, the impatience, the near incestual relationships that were formed and broken and reformed like badly set bones. Of course, she being her, and me being myself, we had two completely different views on how to handle such environments. For her, she’s the one who shrugs it all off and gets on with her life. I’m the isolationist, the brooder. The opposite of her.

Tonight, sitting in the recital hall amongst all the people I’ve come to despise because of circumstance, I felt the old pangs of wanting to crawl under my blankets and just not move. It’s a feeling I can’t quite diminish without lots of time or distraction or distance. Luckily, I’m not on campus that much, and I’ll be damned if I show up for anything after Meghann’s recital (out of obligation). Probably give half of them the finger once I graduate.

How am I supposed to deal with working with these people for the rest of my life? Well, perhaps I won’t.

Ohmygodit’sdone! My recital is done! It’s fucking done! Praise all the gods, every last one, its done!!! I had my reci-TAL! I had my reci-TAL!

*ahem*

So it was closer to thirty people. I had both my teacher and the faculty member I respect the most there. It was really fantastic. It went well, too. I’m debating whether to try and upload a recording. I think that would be okay, since most of those people are long dead, and I doubt they’re gonna care that much.

Here is a list of important things you should know about my life this very moment:

1. I just found funny things here: http://www.despair.com/

2. I have my senior recital tomorrow, and since it snowed about a foot today, I may be performing for three people: my mother, my teacher, and my pseudo-mother.

3. I spent 30 minutes of my day brushing a foot of snow off my car with a broom.

4. I hope to be cooking an imaginary BBQ dinner for the listeners of IDDFOS.

5. I’ve started reading The Alchemist.

6. I just drank the rest of my chocolate milk, which always makes me sad.

7. I’ve started writing the first part of the novel I want to write, for my prose class.

8. My prose class started last Wednesday.

9. I was gonna do “No One Cares What You Had For Lunch” idea #18, but I don’t own a digital camera, and I’ve moved all the interesting collections out of my apartment.

10. My computer screen wears a cowboy hat. Seriously.

11. I’ve not had a Dr. Pepper today, and I’m a little peaved.

I am a gun. Though not sleek black nor rough gripped. I have no magazine in my body, and I don’t have a serial number stamped on me somewhere. However, i do have a trigger and when it is pulled, I fire.

I never realized how dangerous those triggers are. Yesterday, I let one be toyed with, and found myself experiencing a chill and shiver that rocked my rib cage, convulsions that make nearly anything impossible. All i could do was stare in horror and anticipation at my computer screen and huddle before the heater, trying to take good breathes. Concentration can take the edge off, but it cannot control it. Only when the finger is off the trigger. Only then.

This isn’t about that, though. This is about Yes.

I’m learning about how to accept that this moment and this moment and this moment will pass. They will pass and then are no more, and what you have left isn’t worth complaining about. Success is here one moment and gone the next. People fade into the background. All you can do is keep walking forward, and hope that you’re truly doing the right thing light of the universe. I am learning this to some extent. My recital is Sunday, and as nervous as I could be, and probably am (but not admitting), I know that every measure will pass, and its done, and nothing can redo it. All I can do is my best, and let it be at that.

But sometimes, my trigger gets pulled.

It’s very hard to say Yes to the universe when you are racked with spasms that originate at years back, rolling forward into self-made psychoses that I’ve not been able to control in two and a half years. Triggers that work like Pavlov’s Beel. Triggers that are hair-triggers. But I know that Universe is Yes, and I know that nothing that happens is something from a force that can be changed or challenged, and all I can do is my best. But what is my best? What is good for me? Do I even begin to understand what that would be, given the light of the Universe? My mind can only reach into so many corners before it starts running out of eyes.

Do you know what is best for you? Can you know? What i do with this moment, is it okay to be doing it?

These questions plague me from moment to moment. I am told to sit back and enjoy, but my brain, though it knows to let it pass, simply will not let something fall away. It must question. Perhaps it is because I am young and don’t know any better. Perhaps its because I’m not doing what is truly right for me, but can’t put it in the conscious mind yet. Though I resolve to figure it out, I know that life will present the opportunity to figure it out too. Postulating doesn’t work here, I think.

My world has been renewed, inverted. I have purchased an Xbox 360.

Goodbye sunlight.

I don’t understand things. I don’t understand why student teaching has to be so difficult. I don’t understand why I have to be employed to have money. I don’t understand why food can be bad for you. I don’t understand why my friends have emotional complexes. I don’t understand why kids don’t like school. I don’t understand why poetry has to be democratized into analysis. I don’t understand why apartment managers can’t get simple repairs initiated. I don’t understand why my brother has to smoke weed to keep his anger down. I don’t understand why I can’t have my cake and eat it too.

The more I think about it, the more I understand that this is okay, but even that concept is beyond me. “It’s okay to not understand everything,” is a phrase that demands a deeper understanding than most of the stuff I’ve listed above, and a few hundred more things. I know, I’m human, and to be human is to be limited. Yet, we preach about unlimited potentials in all people, and about how the human mind is so complex that it can handle anything you want to do, you simply have to do it. Okay, that last statment is bunk, but for the most part, it seems to have some validity.

I’m sitting in the bath, starting into a book review on a poetry collection, and I come across all these terms that are used to break down poetry. The first question in my mind is, “Why do we need all these poems?” Then came, “Can’t you just read the fucking poem and like it or not?”

I realize that we are people, out here in the vast, and its clear to me that people need definitions to make sense of things. I won’t go into a deeper formatting of that. It’s a truth we all realize. However, those terms and definitions still get in the way. We constantly separate out the wheat from the chaf and we decide good from bad. It’s scholarly, supposedly, and when you are trying to disseminate an entire time period of work, you have to have something to get it in the brain better. My problem lies in that that’s not how I think of things sometimes. Especially reading. I either like it or I don’t. Can’t always say why. Same goes with people. I either like you or not, and sometimes I can’t say why that’s true. Part of its paranoia, but that’s another topic.

This breaking down, this filtering. What good is it? Let’s look at an example. Today, during a fraternity meeting, two council members were discussing the finer points of an individuals career and the works he’d done after retirement. They included things like speaking at national conventions, working with local groups, staying active in national matters. Seems like a nice guy, beyond the points that he was a district governor for the fraternity and was a student in the band with our founding advisor. The guy has been around, and done good things. Councilman A is saying that this person would be a great selection for honorary status because of the work he had done. Councilman B was saying that he didn’t want to select this person for honorary status because he was too local in his works, and no one would know that he’d really been that great of a guy.

I’m sitting here, thinking that its dumb, because the guy obviously wanted to do good things, and did them, regardless of where or when. I like this guy, and I don’t even know him. However, Councilman B is concerned about appearances (which I can’t be completely devoid of considering myself, I’ll admit) and that trivializes the prestige that we were offering. Why discuss placing honor when the good things get pushed aside by circumstance.

How does this apply to poetry? If I’m reading a poem, I’ll see a phrase or stanza that I really like, or an image, and that sticks. But I don’t look at overall phrasing, I don’t look at selection of the syllables to create a greater impact. I don’t look to see if it is “avant-garde” or not. I either like it, or not, and its either a good poem, or a bad one.

My fault? When it comes to music, I’m more discriminating. Perhaps not, I’m not sure. There are lots of songs I can get into, regardless of genre, and many I dismiss before I even hear them because I can predict what they will sound like. I’ve been surprised at times, and this is what makes me reconsider bands like Fall Out Boy and 30 Seconds to Mars. Common? Not gonna listen to him, regardless of how old and not-stupid he is, because he is still gonna talk about “life in the ghetto” and I can’t dig that. Selena? Don’t understand her because there is something about the overall sound of that kind of music that I don’t like. Granted, if Bidi-bidi-bom-bom (or whatever its called) comes on, I’ll dance. It’s good stuff to dance too.

To summarize, if I can, the categorizing gets in the way of what’s really important, I guess. Okay, fine, mediocre essay. I’ll do better next time, I promise.

Last night, I dremt I was driving a car through a city. Over the course of the dream, I started to hear a voice reading a poem. It was Mickey Mouse. Here is what I remember of the poem, interspersed with images from the dream:

[drive the car]

“(something about choices in life)”

[police lights in the rear view mirror, pull over. POV changes to outside car, watching car.]

“Will you choose to stay or will you go?”

[police car pulls behind my car, still watching from outside.

"You'll go."

[I speed away from police car.]

At the very moment that I pull away, my alarm clock blasts in my ear. Lots of blinking follows.