pills

after crying ridiculously to a friend, i worked out and my pills kicked in and now i feel good. great even. the pill thing is weird. very weird. that my whole life - the goodness, the sweetness, the sunshine and pleasure in my life - all comes out of these little bottles. maybe i should stockpile them in case of apocalypse. but seriously: isn't it weird? i feel like i am truly myself with all these pills, that the "real me" is upbeat, positive, energetic, and capable. so if this is the "real me," who was that all those years of hopelessness and bungling failures?

it's so strange to think of the brain and how it works...

got re-hired for fall!

It's a really bad job market in Chicago - they're cutting 18% of teachers district-wide - so I feel extremely lucky to finally get re-hired. Third time's the charm, I guess! It's funny too when I think back, I gave a really terrible interview here. I think I was pretty far down on their list of choices, for various reasons. But things have worked out well.

In other news, check out my kick-ass Black Panthers bulletin board!


The life-size Fred Hampton is courtesy of this site called Block Posters, where you upload an image and get it back as a pdf of 8.5x11 sheets (I think you can pick European sizes as well) at the giant size you specify. I found it via StumbleUpon, just at the right time. Talk about serendipity.

Despite this good news, I'm melancholy this morning. Not sure why. Oh well. Surf the feelings, let them pass. That's how it goes...

May in the garden

I spent all afternoon yesterday sketching in the garden of one of the members of our meetup.com sketching & painting group. here's a lovely photo of where we were, and here are my two sketches:



It's gotten hot in Chicago all of a sudden... today at school I felt like I was wearing a plastic bag, in my customary polyester tunic and slacks. I need some cooler clothes! Some of the women were wearing dresses, which I've always been taught was unprofessional, but it's not like we wear suits every day otherwise, so maybe dresses are ok. Well, they looked much more comfortable than I was, so I guess dresses will have to be ok! haha

In other news, the scale dipped below 200 lbs today for the first time in a long time. I've lost around 20 lbs so far. Yay me! :)

In still other news, that elm tree in the park? Definitely dying. Sigh.

here's what's on my mind today...

at this job so much more than the last two, i am getting a sense of how completely the students' lives are overshadowed by gang violence. every one of them has lost someone close to them. every week someone knows someone who is killed. already this year more people have died in Chicago than in our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, and every one of them is known to some of our students - it's a small world they live in and all the violence is in that world. then this past week a police officer was killed, which is always a huge, huge deal in chicago - more so than other towns, chicago worships its police officers. the whole newspaper front page is always dedicated to the fallen hero (he's always a hero of course) and pics of the man and the funeral etc. are everywhere. so of course, on thursday, the police came to our school around 10 in the morning and arrested one of the students in connection with the murder. great. his life is over, whether he is set free or not - the police do not forgive in these cases and they'll torture him. :( i think of him just being his carefree self and now he'll be in some way erased. later that same Thursday i gave a major test and two of the students had a complete meltdown during the test - screaming and yelling, had to be removed from the test and have their scores invalidated. all the students get so completely agitated and wacky every time someone dies or - in this case - is arrested right out of school. a few weeks ago one of my students had a party where a guy was killed. the hostess of the party was blamed and she was receiving death threats. somehow she kept coming to school - extremely brave of her under the circumstances - but her work took a nosedive. she's a senior expecting to graduate but she is not going to at this rate. their lives are so disrupted, disturbed, distorted, dismembered by all this violence. when i showed some paintings from the 20's and 30's, one of the paintings depicted a large group of people enjoying a nightclub and another group at a barbecue - and several students independently wrote on their papers that these were great images of "a time when African-Americans could get together without fights breaking out." they are so sure it's because of their race and that it's inevitable - that "there will always be violence" as they say whenever i raise the idea of a solution to violence. it's incomprehensible to them that 90% of the world does not live in a situation like theirs - or that this is not because of some inevitable fact of birth. to them violence is such an all-pervasive and permanent fixture of their lives.

today's side effect - went back up half a step on the meds, and today at the end of the day i am exceedingly crabby and impatient, to the point where i am childishly pouty during a meeting (embarrassed to be called on it, in a sort of passive-aggressive way, by two different people). going back up to full dose tomorrow - will try ramping down again in the summer. :P

shadows

So for a long time now I've had this major problem with sleepiness - falling asleep as soon as I sit down, to the point where I've had to stop driving. It started last year when I raised the dose of one of my medications. Since then I've been tested for and treated for sleep apnea - I'm not sure why really, considering that it's obviously one of my medications - I guess I just really really did not want to mess with the meds so I imagined away what I knew.

Finally in desperation this past weekend, since I was going to a meditation retreat with Miri, I tried cutting back my meds just for those two days to try to cut down on the sleepiness issue. Well, it didn't help as much as I'd have hoped during the retreat itself - I still slept through large parts of the meditation - but at school today I noticed a huge difference. I literally had been going into the teachers' lounge at lunch and going to sleep on the lunch table (which isn't great because there's not much space in there to begin with). I had been falling asleep while teaching in my afternoon classes, if I was dumb enough to sit down.

But today I felt awake and alert even though I was (am) tired. It was great.

But in the evening yesterday and today I've struggled with waves of fear and anxiety - jumping out of my skin, thinking I see people in the shadows when I'm the last one to leave school at night. These dark forebodings feel familiar and I worry that I'm again confronting the enemy who has defeated me so many years of my life... I know that's an exaggeration but is, itself, a byproduct of the fear.

Of course, these feelings could also be due to the large amounts of caffeine I've been consuming to try to stay awake, especially as I've been getting up extra-early to try to work out or meditate every morning.

So ... the tradeoff question is obvious. The second question of course (or maybe the first) is, why am I doing this by myself instead of going through my doctor? But the doctor would just cut the meds and tell me to call her in two weeks... but no... how do I know what she would do?

Sigh.

I think I should just go to bed and sleep. Maybe even sleep in a little. WOrkout and meditation can wait one day. Or is that bad too - giving up my self-care first when I get tired instead of prioritizing self-care and giving up responsibilities at work that have grown too heavy?

(otoh I did accomplish something on the extra-responsibilities front - thank you to those who encouraged me behind the scenes :) )

turning of the seasons

thinking about graduation as colleges around us have theirs... the elm tree in the park is producing millions of those fluttery papery seeds that always remind me of the end of the year at harvard... every year moving out of a room that had seen so many ups and downs but overall another good year of friendship and scholarship... i think i DID appreciate those things at the time tho i allowed myself to get very strung out on highs and lows... was always hard for me to pack up because i hated the endings associated with the packing-up. hollis, then E-11, E-31, G-31... remember? at graduation my head nearly imploded from being unable to handle all the good-byes. "i'm sure i'll see you again before we leave," i told each person, to avoid having to say it. i don't know what i said to Amy... it's a complete blank... but i don't suppose i can possibly have avoided that goodbye. i don't remember saying goodbye to nadine but i remember after she left ("a cloud shifts, the plane lifts, she moves on..." - not that that whole song applies, but phrases of it ran through my head for a year thereafter) going down to sit by the river and feel... whatever one feels in that situation at 21.

i wonder if the elm tree is dying, i suppose they all are. it looks like it has nothing but an enormous sheaf of seeds for about the top 2/3 of the tree. is that how they normally look? or is it some kind of last-ditch survival effort by a dying tree? i wonder how all our old courtyards are looking these days; how many of the old trees have died, and with what have they been replaced? that evergreen by the administration building where john harvard's statue was always looked out of place and weird. i hope they didn't continue in that vein.

that all sounds very mournful and morbid but that's not how i'm feeling at all. just - things bring back memories, is all.

so, well, anyway. graduation. just have to hang in there til the end of the school year now. gotta get through that Black Panthers project... a little stressed because i've fallen behind in the extra responsibilities i took on. i'm afraid i'm going to be "found out" as someone who doesn't follow through. i spent the whole weekend on a meditation retreat so i didn't get anything done this weekend - despite having played hooky on friday. *sigh* looks like i'll be staying late all week again.

but, that's life. life is good, overall. life is good.

beautiful

What a gorgeous day it is in Chicago. A beautiful day for being right here, right now, not for worrying about the future or mooning about the past. Right here, right now. Beauty and light... such beauty and light.

nostalgia...

Busy week at work... took on a project that unexpectedly took more time and energy, and had less help, than I had expected. I think it's finished now... or at least one phase of it is finished... enough that I can bow out of the rest of it I think without seeming to drop it in the middle.

We are supposed to be finishing up the year with our service learning projects. I don't think I can manage the two that I had planned - just one, maybe. I feel tired and the end is in sight and I just want to coast on the wind and slip sweetly into the hangar... but I've promised to create children's books about immigrant children's experiences, and a museum-quality display about the Black Panthers; I need to follow through on at least one of them.

I think the students I'd selected to do the books are not mature enough for the interviews or careful enough for piecing together the finished products, so I won't follow through on that. I'm nervous about holding the older students' attention for the Black Panther piece, but hopefully that will happen of its own accord because the material is really very compelling.

The translator I mentioned in the previous blog entry seems to be becoming a friend and has touched off other things for me... or re-awakened I should say... perhaps due to hearing him quote Persian poetry, I uploaded a new stack of my Iran photos (that's me with the flying lions at left... aka the Gate of All Nations, where all the subject nations' representatives brought their gifts to Darius on New Year's Day...) And definitely due to hearing him quote Chinese poetry, I've been thinking about all my Chinese and Japanese studies, my poetry... I've looked up my favorite poems online, of which I could only remember a few words - found them in their entirety and enjoyed that I can still read them and delight in them. I found my dear old Genji Monogatari online, with multiple modern Japanese translations side-by-side so that you can compare them, no less (you can even check which ones you want, and what commentary, and the page will reload exactly to your specifications - heh). I have thought about my thesis, and marveled that you were actually willing to read it for me, Amy n Nadine! What great friends I had and not sure I barely appreciated it at the time! Only as time passes do I realize how rare and precious those friendships are, and how little I deserved them, young and stupid as I was... I remember our trip to Cape Cod, Nadine, where I did a good chunk of proof-reading; I remember happy things from that trip (when for so long I've only thought about one negative event) - snow on the beach and stars at night, and sitting by the fire marking up my draft... I wonder where my thesis is... my Japanese books are still packed away in boxes and I sprang out of bed this morning fully intending to disinter them, but other things distracted me (such as uploading Iran pix to Flickr). I wrote Sylvia and it amused me to note the difference between this note and my previous epistle to her - it's like the Harvard student in me has been re-awakened and I used words like "epistle"... that oh-so-ironic language, with perfect grammar and elaborate vocabulary... self-mocking and showing off at the same time.

I've been hoping to make an East Coast trip this summer, though it looks relatively unlikely; that was one reason for contacting Sylvia. I have friends and/or relatives in DC, NY, Boston... and I miss the East Coast... I am trying and trying to find Chicago homelike, particularly as it's so much cheaper than back East, but if I could wave a magic wand and transport us to NYC or even Boston - job and housing of course being equal or better - I would do it, I would do it, I would do it in a nanosecond.

So I'm being nostalgic for a former life. I need to shake it off and get on with my day. But it's interesting to remember who I once was, what once engaged me and took all my time... and how I used to be, as I bragged to impress my translating friend, one of the best translators of Heian period Japanese prose in the country (maybe the world). I didn't even think of it like that at the time but it must have been true, thanks in large part to the fact that there are so few of us and that I was trained by the best. What happened to that life? I know what happened to it but... life's twists and turns are so strange, and one throws away or disregards pearls when one is young... I should have just at least finished up my Master's at Columbia... at the time I thought I just couldn't, but... I think back over all the turning points and wonder what would have happened if I'd gone another way... I don't wish that I were an academic, not at all, that life is painfully circumscribed, particularly in the field to which I would have devoted myself... but I wish I had finished my Master's and that I had finished more of the projects I had going at the time, whose fragments are also packed away in boxes that I've not opened since our 2007 move.

Well, maybe when I retire...

happy spring...

happy again... my new meds (well, new a year ago now) have really turned me into a different person... mostly i'm happy, most days - almost all days - i'm glad to be alive. Pema Chödrön says,

“I’m glad to be alive to agreeable, I’m glad to be alive to disagreeable. And I’m glad to be alive to sour and sweet and tingly and itchy, and refreshing and cold and hot and the whole thing. And it doesn’t matter that there is this voice that says I don’t like this, or I do like this, that’s fine, you know, that’s also fine, but somehow open and at home, with your body, your mind, and your world, and meditation is actually the means or, the tools that we need… It actually is that the present moment is the doorway to liberation, vastness, unobstructed quality of our mind. And we could experience the world that way.”

and just because of the meds i do begin to feel glad to be alive to different experiences, interested in what's around the corner... i know my world is still small and cramped compared to the "liberation, vastness, unobstructed quality of our mind" that i experience when i do meditate regularly (haven't been, due to the falling-asleep issue)............but i open my arms to the wind and the sunlight and i tip my head back to blue sky or rainy.... and laugh or smile and just feel glad. i love the trees blooming right now - i've taken photos - wait let me upload them...




and i love the blossoms falling so sweet and fluttery, flowing and eddying like powdery snow in the wake of cars... i love the tulips so red and the tulips falling apart... this morning i walked out in the park and i loved the birdsong and the sound of wind in the trees, the sweet smell and feel of dewy grass... spring is in full swing and summer's coming... i have so much to cover in my classes and so much joy to be able to have so much to teach.

looking ahead to the summer, i'm gonna quote (with some editing) from an email i sent to Nadine... i'm laughing as i note somewhat more anxiety and somewhat less 'glad to be alive' than what i'm expressing now... that's ok... glad to be alive to anxious and glad to be alive to peace.

"have a trip planned to Montana and Wyoming (wild beautiful country like in Brokeback Mountain) to see a bunch of cousins - but it's me and mom in the car for 10 days - what was i thinking? ? panic setting in. wondering how to fix that - but her whole trip depends on me chauffeuring. well, i'm gonna ask her how i can shorten it - there may be some days at the beginning and end where the cousins can drive her places.

i mean... i know the scenery is beautiful but... TEN DAYS???? damn...

on top of that i just accepted a job from the boss's boss's boss, writing curriculum in the summer... which wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't already accepted another job writing curriculum for my own boss (the principal) and a third (well that was foisted upon me) working with an outside program to design and provide select services to specific students.

I don't know what all these jobs entail and how much of my time they'll take up, but I'm starting to worry that I won't get any summer break, and come fall I'll feel like I was at school all during my break. I'm told curriculum writing involves taking all the materials away and coming back later, not being at school all the time, but i'm suspicious. anyway i took the jobs for the sake of the serious banking of brownie points... so i think i should just focus on that and consider this summer an investment... frontload the brownie points... hopefully the investment will pay off in the long term and not just be a stupid move in a game i was bound to lose.

so i have this wyoming-montana trip lined up at the end of june/beginning of july, and a week-long queer buddhist retreat in august (same one i went to last year) and id like to get something else in, a trip to new york maybe - i'd like to see the cousins in Boston and Colin and Joel in NYC... and just be in NYC for a day or two... i miss it and i love being there when i get the chance... i've also thought about going overseas somewhere but i don't think i really have time for that... and i'd like to go somewhere with R (she is not interested in the NY-Boston trip). She can't really get any time off work for various reasons... so a quick trip to England to see our friends there is out. A quick trip to Minneapolis is more appealing to her... but that's frustrating cuz it's in driving distance but we'd have to fly because R doesn't have any time. So all this adds up in terms of time and money. I'd have to choose between my east-coast trip and our couple trip to MN, and R doesn't seem to care but I don't know if she does or not, or if I do or not ("I can spend time with you at home," she says). So anyway. Lots to think about. Lots of balancing acts... between what i want to do if i could do anything, and what's in the realm of the possible, and commitments i've made that i am reconsidering too late...

(end of email to Nadine)

so that's my news, my life, my state of mind. long post... my 800th, incidentally. yay me, yay blog. blog is 6 years old, born on May 18, 2004. Weird. May 3 is another anniversary, a good one - first contact with a friend. Recently met a new potential friend - translator of classical poetry in Persian, Latin, Chinese, etc etc... speaks every language, it seems... he knows more than i do about a lot of things, which makes it fun to learn from him but also makes me feel stupid, so i can't take too many hours of conversation with him... he also talks a lot... so you know, like any friend, good and bad mixed together. trying to make more friends here in Chicago... settle in and make it home. still doesn't feel like home and when i think about it i'd still rather be in NYC, but Chicago is so much cheaper and really has many charms, so i need to reconcile myself to being here.

babbling now.

love to all.