Classroom Dynamics

I can't remember the last time I wrote something that actually dealt with the day to day realities of my life, and so I think it's about high time to get into the nitty-gritty. I'm a teacher now. Ha. Let's define "teacher" for a second here. Someone who is old. Check. Someone who knows things. Uh.. check I guess. Someone who stands in front of an assemblage of students on a daily basis. Sure, yeah, I'm still following you, check. Someone with the ability to convey something of worth to said students he or she stands in front of. Ah fuck, nope, I can't do that.

I "teach" four classes a week by myself, but I think on the kid's schedules instead of "Eikaiwa" (English Conversation) some cheeky little bastard at the Shokuinshitu (teacher's room) substituted recess. Or maybe nap-time? The kids certainly converse, but rarely in English, and rarely when I want them to. To be fair, this is due mostly to a combination of my poor abilities as a teacher and Japanese society's hesitance to prescribe Ritalin, but yikes I've had some worthless classes so far, that's for sure. The other day I was trying to teach them about Mt. Rushmore (my first mistake) and a host of other noteworthy American landmarks (including the Alamo, I was really trying to pick the most impossible shit I could, I guess. I don't write out what I'm going to say in class before I go, I just kinda wing it, and so imagine my surprise when I came to the Alamo. I have a difficult enough time trying to convey the names of fruits and vegetables, let alone facts about the Mexican-American war and the conception of rugged individualism as it relates to the old west. Fuck, I was like, "uhh, and then I went to the Alamo (the whole presentation was framed as a massive vacation i went on), which is... an old building? Ok moving on... Disney Land!"). That lesson went well, except for when I looked at my students. I try not to do that anymore. Just pretend they're not there and everything will be fine.

Some good things do come out of my lessons, however. During the first week I got a lot of attention from my female students. I remember back in middle school all the girls had huge crushes on Mr. Bruns, the social studies teacher, (two bits if you remember that dude), and boy was I jealous of him. He was like 26 (?) and all the hot chicks were totally into him, while here I was, appropriately aged (13), and floundering in a sea of never having talked to a girl ever. To be fair, part of me was OK with that, but another part of me wanted to kick Mr. Bruns in the nuts. Oh how times change, because now I have become Mr. Bruns. And you know what, it's not that tight. I feel for the poor guy. But I guess I feel more for myself, because when you get down to it I'm sure the girls who were into Mr. Bruns were a little less forward in their appreciation. I wonder if they ever walked up to him and said "you have beautiful eyes." Or, slightly more unlikely, hollered from the back of the class, "cute boy!" No, I'm quite sure that never happened to him. But it does happen to me, and I guess there's nothing to do about but luxuriously sweep my hair away from my eyes and act sheepish. There's no other appropriate response. There is one girl who asks me her name every time I see her, and after a fifteen second struggle with my recalcitrant memory and I finally find myself able to bring it up, she collapses into a paroxysm of delight that I can only respond to by turning my back and running away at full speed. I'm going to have to do something to let those poor 13 year old boys know that I'm not trying to steal their potential girlfriends. I think I'm going to stop showering and or shaving and or wiping my butt and see how long it takes for a) the infatuation to fade away or b) for me to get fired. Only time will really tell.

A Long Time Gone

It's been a while since I've posted anything, I realize, and while there are a couple things bouncing around in my head from the past few weeks, I just can't seem to get to get it up right now (gross) so for the time being, how about some more of the epic??? Sorry this part sucks too, I think the editorial comment at the end of the selection speaks for itself, but I swear it's the last lame one of the bunch. Then it gets rocking for real.

The truest thing about divinity is that it

cannot hardly separate itself from pride,

and for Triton it was no different. Though

his wound was already closing, he felt the

pain of it steadily growing. Like a lunatic

blood poison it traveled through his veins,

bypassing his vena cava and heading up, thirsting

not for his heart but his mind. Slowly upward

did it flow, and even as Joanna was heartened

by the apparent regeneration of his Divine health

his mind grew closer and closer to insanity.

And so they swam on, she unaware of her dire

peril, he unable to do anything about it.

Some time along, the poison now very near

to Triton’s brain, he stopped, seemingly needing

to catch his breath. The nymph, still unaware

of his degeneration, happily obliged and the

two of them sat on a rock. Triton looked

up into the sea and the sky above that, and

spoke to the naiad, lost somewhere deep

inside his slowly twisting mind. “Dost thou

see the stars far up? Dost thou see them?

Mine eyes can pierce those heights, and

to me they seem to waver. Fleeting and

inconstant, whose were they before

they gave themselves to the Olympians?

Zeus made them not, and neither did that

glorified smith, Hephaistos. They were there

flickering before Ancient Kronos and likely they

will long survive me and thou. Why do they

waver so? Do they mock me in my

frailty?”

“Lord, do not speak so, it makes no sense.

Thou art strong as thou hath ever been. The

stars do not waver, ‘tis merely the watery

filter through which thou see’ests them.”

“Nay, they waver, and they would

do so for me even were I to see them from

the solid earth. Has thou ever known a

god to die? I think it must be possible. Does

our power come from ourselves? Clearly not

entirely, for what power had Zeus before

he took it from Kronos?”

“ Enough to fight back the Titans. But wait,

why do you even ask? What a morbid subject

for one so mighty...”

“My might bled out of me when that boy

smote me with his weapon. So much

strength, and so inconspicuous! From

whence has he descended that he

should have grown so strong so soon, and

without anyone knowing?

Yet Zeus hadn’t lightning bolts before they

were gifted to him, and even Gaia

came out of Chaos. We are nothing in

ourselves.”

“But thou are so much to us! Didst thou

not feel the sea’s wound as it reflected

thine? If you died would the sea die

too?”

“My fair nymph, I may be the sea while I

yet live, but was there not a sea before

there was me? Were there no waters

before I was born to Lord them?

Nay! The ocean breathes not through

my lungs, rather I breath through the

ocean.”

“ All the same, what is a city without

a king, and how could we survive your

death. Our love for thee would dissolve

our bodies! (But how could thou die?

Thou are Triton, king of the sea...)

“ Am I so great as to deserve such devotion

from thee? What do I do, save take offense

and subsequently revenge for the actions

of mortals? Does the water love me for

my abuse of it? Does any mortal love me,

or do they merely show respect for fear

of me? Death would be a gift. Would thou

die with me?”

“ So thee is intent upon dying? It seems that

thy wound penetrates far beneath thy mendable

skin. Could no words persuade thee?”

“ My eyes are growing dark and I fear that

the shade is death.”

“ Then I would go with thee. Whatever you

say, I love thee, and a sea devoid of thy

presence would be for me too salty by

far. How could I discern the water

from my tears?”

“ All is well. On this trident let me

take what the Arbiter left behind. Hades,

thou shall not have my spirit, for it belongs

to the sea. Here, Joanna, let me soothe

thy pains with a gentle edge... The cut is

true... Now for me... It’s not as cold

as I had thought it would be.... With my

blood, I make peace. Now let it run forever

in the waters of my ocean... peace...”

And so, almost in sight of Poseidon’s great

palace, for it was beyond only the next rise,

Triton took his life along with that of his loyal

nymph and surrendered his immense soul back

to the sea. Before his eyes closed for the last

time, the haggard gleam therein went out, and

for a moment there were flowing lines of peace

graven upon each iris.

Seconds later his body and that of the nymph’s were

consumed in a startling blaze of ultramarine, and

a blinding light sped out of the ocean and up into

the air, racing for a little grove of trees nearby. The

moaning of the waters ceased, and where two godly

bodies had lain only a brief flash earlier, no trace remained.

(BLEAGHHH, SUCKS)

A Dip into my Brain

It's strange to stop and notice you're somewhere new, and then to look behind you and see how you've got there. Does the past stretch out behind us like a road, like a wide, straight path, clearly visible all the way back along gently inwardly sloping time-lines that create the impression of distance before they vanish into the dim West, the setting sun that sits static on the edge of our worlds and marks , somewhat paradoxically, where we started? Is it clean, manicured, littered here and there with signposts that we can see that we can read that tell us where we were and when we were there? Can they tell us what it was like to be where we were? Or, is the past the proverbial winding road, short-sighted, obscured by the bends we've just come around, the anticipation of those to come? Does it move up and down, into and out of valleys, onto promontories where everything is visible for years and years around, sometimes coming down and turning strange corners where all around there's nothing but cliffs, big old rock walls on all sides and just a little trickle of a path to crawl through in the dark. Is the past a road at all, is the impression of distance, of a discrete progression through space and time just a metaphor we make up to understand and order the massive glotted mess of memories that are our lives?

I guess it's all semantics because when you get down to the stones at your feet and the old dusty trails in your mind, where we are is where are, and where we were is where we were. It's fun to plot lines between then and now, now and again, however, because that's the only way we can see the extraordinary lines our lives make. What am I doing right now? Sitting on my balcony in Japan listening to Creed, firing neurons into cyberspace and trying to paint a picture of what my life has become, is becoming. What was I doing two years ago? Sitting in my room in Japan, probably listening to Creed, scribbling in a journal, trying to figure out how I was going to survive a semester in an unknown place. Well, I've got about three times as much time to while away this time, and a much wider portal to spit myself out of once it's all done. What was I doing last year? Mostly drinking hella beer, staying up late because, never sleep you silly bitch, playing Settlers three times a day, occassionally reading something, occassionally fretting about something. But with the briefest progression of three months, oh how things have changed. And in so many ways. I'm back in Middle School, wandering the halls of a place that most certainly is not Kellogg, dressed in a shirt and slacks, armed with posters, pictures, and a suddenly most spectacular ability to speak English, waking up at six-thirty and unable to stay awake past ten thirty most nights. Talk about a dramatic revision. But I guess that's what makes this life fun; it's potential for rapid, incandescent, fundamentally revisionist Change. Every morning I wake up and am amazed by how the jigsaw pieces that make up my life have been rearranged and put back together, how elements I expected and pieces I never could have imagined are combining to form an entirely new me that is only a few steps down the road from where I was, but feels, at times, like a man who's stepped into a parallel universe. Are there other worlds than these? Why worry about that, when Earth contains more than you could explore in a lifetime?

I just can't stop

Ok, I love this song. T-Tones, this one's for you.

Something to Wash away the Faith

I really can't leave that last post up standing alone any longer. Have you ever cried while watching a person make a speech? Have you ever cried while watching somebody make a fourty-five minute speech about governmental policy? Is you name Kramer Phillips? If not, kill yourself. Whoops, I guess I have. Then I wrote a really long, passionate post about it. What is the world coming to? Not sure, but I need a little irreverence to bring things back to normal.

Uh, let's see here, there's gotta be something.... ..... ..... fuck, come on, something.... I haven't felt this stretched for material since I stood up in front of a class and sang this song: "January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December." To the theme from Splash Mountain. See if you can do that, and then see how you feel about yourself afterwards. I at least got to do it in front of roomful of giddy seventh graders who clapped for me when it was done and were awed at my ability to say "February" without sounding like my mouth was full of marshmallows. It's not their fault, listening to people who don't speak Japanese trying to speak Japanese is similarly painful, and they don't often have the redeeming qualities of being 11 and adorable. It's like being in a classroom of little puppies. Or maybe kitties. You know the website kittenwar.com? Well, it used to be my favorite way to pass 10 seconds, but now it's my life. You do always get that one really ugly kitty every once in a while, which, well, yeah my life works like that too. You can't scorn the ugly child, however. You just have to smile the biggest at them.

Yep, I think that'll suffice.