Why the Kite Runner is Awful Compared to William Golding and the Essex Green.

I am still on my Essex Green kick that began in the later hours of yesterday afternoon. Since early this morning I have been listening to their albums Cannibal Sea and The Long Goodbye nonstop with exception for around 10 o'clock when I broke away for awhile to listen to Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah. I had this strong urge to sing along with "Satan Said Dance." You know the words, and if you don't, well, you should. Well anyways, I had one of those urges, you know, to hear that mumbling voice. Its kind of soothing. However, after only a couple of song from Some Loud Thunder, I switched back to Essex Green. I suppose I'm just in a melodic kind of mood . . . and oh yeah, I'm posting today a real picture of them, rather than those very green photos of Essex that I posted yesterday.

Along with listening to Essex Green, this morning I finished the book I was reading, Darkness Visible by William Golding, the master of all things wordly. If you haven't figured out I am a complete and total Golding fan. When I found Pincher Martin on the shelves in some used bookstore I had a mini-frenzied-joy-attack. I started jumping up and down in the aisle, because you would believe how hard Golding's work is to find, almost all of it is out-of-print, so the only way I have made my way in finding the collected works was to search out of print book sellers on the Internet. So anyways, more to the point, I finished Darkness Visible and it was either beautiful, wonderful, mind-blowing, or everything, I can't decide. It was just so poignantly written . . . it evoked every emotion in me . . . stunningly.

Here's a passage from the text:

"The figure was a child, drawing nearer. As they picked their way past the new crater they saw him plain. He was naked and the miles of light lit him variously. A child's stride is quick; but this child walked down the very middle of the street with a kind of ritual gait that in and adult would have been called solemn. The captain could see --and now, with a positive explosion of human feeling --why this particular child walked as it did. The brightness on his left side was not an effect of light. The burn was even more visible on the left side of his head. All his hair was gone on that side, and on the other, shrivelled to peppercorn dots. His face was so swollen he could only glimpse where he was going through the merest of slits. It was perhaps something animal that was directing him away from the placed where the world was being consumed. Perhaps it was luck, good or bad, that kept him pacing in the one direction where he might survive."

And another:

"Matty was now fixed in a different position so that skin could be transferred from one part of his body to the other. It was a condition of some absurdity and the other children in the burns hospital, none of whom had much to laugh at, enjoyed his plight. Grown-ups came to entertain and console him but no woman held his undamaged side to her breast. She would have had to contort herself to do so. His smile went unused. There was rather more visible now to the casual visitor; and these, hurrying to their own unfortunates, were repelled by the sordid misery in which Matty passed his days, and they flashed sideways at him and uneasy smile which he interpreted with absolute precision. When at last he was cut loose, and having been as much as possible repaired was set on his feet, his smile seemed to have gone for good. The blasting of his left side had given him some contraction of the sinews that growth had not yet redressed, so he limped. He had hair on the right side of his skull but the left side a a ghastly white, which seemed so unchildlike it was an invitation by its appearance of baldness to discount his childishness and treat him as an adult who was being stubborn or just silly. Organizations ground on round him for his benefit but there was little more that could be done with him. His background was probed and probed without result. For all that the most painstaking inquiries could find, he might have been born from the sheer agony of a burning city."

Weren't those so . . . powerful? Now just imagine the entirety of the book being like that, as these passages only came from the first chapter. For me, they seem to be proof enough that Golding was and is the Master of prose, and well-deserving of his Nobel Prize for literature. The only thing that irks me is that most only know him for Lord of the Flies, and treat him as if that was the only book he ever wrote, because he wrote much more, and in some cases his other works are undoubtedly more poignant and powerful than Lord of the Flies. My personal favorite is The Spire . . . I think it demonstrates everything he demonstrated in Lord of the Flies only it was better.

Now I am in the beginning chapters of Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. A friend of mine gave it to me, because she said that it was wonderful. I, of course, had heard of it, but was never much into it . . . I wasn't even into the movie when it came out, so I never saw it. However, I thought I should read it anyways . . . for the experience, if not, just to be nice. I will say that the only Burroughs for me is William Burroughs, though, he fills the spot completely.

I just keep telling myself that it won't be as bad as The Kite Runner, which was one of those mainstream books, now turned movie, that everybody loved . . . except me. I hated it . . . no, I slightly loathed it. The situation was one of those comparable to the Seinfeld episode where everybody but Elaine loves "The English Patient" and as a result they shun her for it. People would go, "what? you don't love the kite runner? why not? are you crazy? its great! oprah loves it! you should to!" It would actually get very intense these verbal sparrings that others and myself would have . . . I would defend myself continually pointing out everything in the text that I . . . disliked . . . and they would with things like "well, the new york times loves it and they're smarter than you," as if that was an actual defense.

I'm hoping that this book doesn't do turn into one of those . . . the beginning is okay . . . I hope it gets better.

Snowflakes Falling in My Eyelashes.

I just keep looking out the window to see little flakes fluttering on the the other side of the window pane, falling down into the pit of the city below, with all the walking people (as rare as they are even) sheltering their faces from their specks of wetness. I went out in the weather earlier to get to work and then walking to and from building and building. Driving, or moreover, commuting home was a sullen trip with all of the sad drear that the overcast sky was shedding on the world.



Right now I happen to be listening to Essex Green which I suppose doesn't fit the white and grey mood that the atmosphere is setting for me. Of course being the kind of person I am, typed in Essex Green into a stock gallery to get some stock footage of Essex Green to put in this post. However, they really didn't have a way for me to get the disambiguation away from Essex in England, and separately, green as color. This is the best thing I got. Of course, I'm using the images anyway, because I'm in need of something to lighten up the mood. Its a little too drear around here.

I think that now I am going to go and make some soup and lentils. I bought all the ingredients at the market last night. John is supposed to be coming over later after he gets off of work, and if I don't start preparing for dinner now it will never get done. I'll fall asleep and before you know it John will be shaking me awake asking where the supposedly wonderful dinner is. I would hate to disappoint him after all the soup he's made for me.

Pretty City in the Wintertime.

Today is a nice day for a walk outside. I'm not saying this because the weather is particularly nice out of doors, but rather I am saying it because it feels like one of those days, you know, the shout in the air, wind in your face, beautiful being kind of days. I just wanted to fall asleep in it. Of course, now that I am think I am kind of glad that I didn't fall asleep in it because seeing that it is only 25 degrees outside and there is and abundant amount of snow on the ground, I might have caught a cold.

. . . What can I say?

The quiche I made last night for dinner turned out quite well . . . so did the babka. However, I ended up roasting the chicken a tad bit too much, so it ended up being a little . . . rough. The snow peas were a mistake in themselves, because I picked them up not at the all natural organic produce market like I always do with my fruits and vegetables; instead, I went a little nuts and decided to just pick some out at the produce section of the supermarket. It was a bad mistake because they tasted like trash. I can't decided whether it was my rather . . . shifty . . . cooking ability that made them so, or if it was because I've been eating fresh produce for so long that I actually taste the difference. On a further note, I ended up brewing some splendid tea that washed away the bad taste in my mouth.


I suppose I have just lost my touch in picking out good vegetables and fruits. The fact is that I haven't had a single good wholesome meal since finals ended. Its been a severe series of overeating mixed with a craze of snacking. I even cut out fruit . . . This morning I picked up a banana to have for breakfast and it felt like I had never tasted one before. I suppose I just forgot that biting sweetness of a not yet entirely ripe green banana. In less words, it was the best thing I had tasted for awhile.

Of course, I'm glad that I didn't pick these bananas up at the supermarket. John brought them over because he said that I needed to start eating healthier foods, rather than the crap that I had so recently been shoving down my throat. He also brought over some pears . . . which are fruit that I have not always been privy to . . . but I had one for lunch today and it was quite delicious. It had the right amount of juice and flesh to make it just succulent.


Along with not eating any fruit I've also caught a case of the lazies . . . as I've mentioned in the previous posts. I've into the habit of lying in bed all day, drinking tea, and reading these monstrous books, while falling asleep . . . even if its the middle of the days and the sun is shining bright through the neighboring window. Sometime after I woke up for a munch on a breakfast banana and sometime before I ate that pear for lunch, John came over and had to pull me out of doors. He pulled me along with him through the park and and to some shop he wanted to visit and then back home so I could fall dead back onto my mattress.


Well, anyways, bad habits will die tomorrow . . . or at least I hope they do . . . I don't think I can keep this up for long.

The Error of My Ways.

So I suppose I could say that I have been a little . . . distracted. Over the past weeks I have spent more time sleeping and reading and lounging and being than I have ever in the entirety of my existence. I now am beginning to realize error in taking up all of these bad, lazy habits . . . because in a few short days, I will be back to the grindstone, working. For now, I am going to treasure these last remaining moments and try to break the mold vacation had given me.

On a lighter note, I finally made it to the grocery market today, and have fully stocked the previously stark cabinets. Tonight will be a wonderful dinner of spinach quiche and roasted chicken breast complete with snow peas and decadent dessert of chocolate babka. I'm going/went a little crazy in the kitchen tonight . . . I'll tell you how it tastes later.

C.R.A.Z.Y.

I have finally gotten around to writing a new post . . . things have been a little busy, or if not busy then just kind of hectic in the holiday rush and whatnot. Just to say, I finally made it back to the city only two days ago and from there I had to unpack the car, the suitcases, my coat pockets, and myself. I have just spent the better length of a week with a family speaking tongues I could not understand, eating family delicacies that I would never dare to put in my mouth, and feigning ignorance to all the prying questions touching on the nature of my and John’s relationship with each other. I mean, what does one say to an aging grandmother that is trying with all her willpower to ask in broken English when the wedding was taking place? I felt a little said after telling her that we were in fact not getting married and that we were not even really dating. Her face went a little flat . . . of course, and then she waddled over to John and with what sounded like very fierce words that were later translated to me as her demanding him to tell her why we were not getting married. Crazy, I know.

Other than those sorts of same mishaps, the week was . . . interesting . . . oh and Chicago was wonderful. The big city was booming as it always is. It was weird spending Christmas day in a hotel, but it wasn’t that bad. Mother was as good as she could be . . . had a little bit of lichen growing on the tombstone, but hey, it’s granite so it’s a natural process that should be occurring.
The flight back was nice. I slept, because well hotel beds do not provide as much comfort as one would expect.

Well, now I am going to settle onto the couch and take another nap . . . maybe I’ll read or something before I fall asleep . . . at least that would be a little bit more productive.

Finally, A Break.

I made it through finals. I was excited. Now I am just waiting for grades to be posted and whatnot. With Christmas coming around the bend, I am enjoying this, in my opinion, well-deserved break, by "vacationing" with my brother in Missouri (exciting, I know . . . ) Tomorrow I will be driving back to the city to nap for the rest of the day, so I can wake up early on Saturday to catch a flight to Chicago with John to go and see my mother. This is my first winter without her, so I'm going to go out and get some nice bouquets of Christmas flowers to put on her grave. I think she'd appreciate it, since she always loved the flowers in the wintertime. John's going for support. I suppose he thinks I am going to break down completely and throw myself across the tombstone or something (even though I told him I would do no such thing.) I think he just wants a reason to go to the big city and not have to deal with the big foreign family reunion that is awaiting him in St. Louis (which we are going to anyways, but just arriving a day late.) I'll get to hear him translate for me Norwegian and all those funky languages his family speaks. I told him it sounded like fun, but he just shook his head and laughed at me. I guess I don't understand.

Driving Makes Me Sleepy.

John and I got back from St. Louis today at around 6ish. The trip was enjoyable. We went around to all the museums, visited his parents, ate some really nice "cuisine," etc. The killer about trips like these is always that long 4 hr drive back. It just gets so monotonous. I tried to not fall asleep. I willed myself to not fall asleep. But alas, I fell asleep, which was bad on my part because I had so much work that I could have been doing. When we got home neither of us felt like putting together dinner, so instead we got some carry-out Chinese. It was sub-par to the meals I have been having lately . . . just a tad bit too salty.

Well, I better go and get some more sleep. I have a final to take in the morning . . . yay.

Waiting for My Ears to Thaw.

I just got home. It was a late night at the office again and I have a feeling that tomorrow is going to end up just the same, since class isn't in session on Friday and next week is finals week. I am just tired of dealing with people. It gets so repetitive after a while that I get so wound up and I never have a chance to deflate.

It is still cold here. I lost all feeling in my face in the walk from my car to the flat. I lost my hat with the poof-ball on top and cozy ear flaps on the sides, so everything just hits me right in the face. I tried to wrap my scarf so it would kind of block the wind out, but alas, it didn't work.

I was so glad when I got in to see the John was still here and had kept dinner warm in the oven. It was a nice warm vegetarian lasagna with rye and garlic toast, a side of fresh broccoli and snow peas all tumbled together, finished with the best fruit pastry I have ever had (it was from the gourmet bakery down the street). Yum! Yesterday he surprised me with, not tomato soup like he said; instead, it was fusilli pasta in a Gorgonzola and walnut sauce with a side of very delicious winter melon soup. It was superb beyond all comparison.

Tomorrow I think he's planning something with chicken or turkey . . . some kind of poultry. I'm looking forward to it. I told him to not begin cooking it until later in the evening though, because I don't want it to be cold when I come home . . . that always kind of ruins it. Friday, however, on my day off we're driving over to St. Louis to visit his parents for the day. We're staying up there for the entire weekend though, to take in the environment and lifestyle, go see the art museum (it always has good exhibitions), and mingle with some of John's old college friends that still live in the area. It'll be nice, since I never get to go anywhere new unless its for work or school. I've forgotten what it feels like to actually have fun and enjoyment while on holiday.

Anyways, my feet are getting cold and I am having a really strong craving for some hot chocolate. Weird, I know. I think I'll go and put the kettle on to make some.

An Early Leave Makes for a Great Surprise.

I actually got to go home early today! I mean, yeah, I was planning on coming home early anyways, but I'd like to think that I was somehow scamming the system to do so . . . it makes me feel like I am actually accomplishing something.

The real reason for my early leave is that I had a doctor's appointment. It was boring. I always hate sitting in that little room with the bed/chair thing draped in that white meatpacking paper. Its too sanitary, too clean. I suppose I'm healthy (I know that all any reader is thinking about right now is 'I wonder what she's got'). It was just one of those 'routine' once every couple of months checkups. The doctor prescribed a different brand of sleeping pills, the others I was taking weren't working. That was about it. Then I went home.

Now, I am going to take a nap or something. John's over, making an early dinner or late late lunch. He said it was going to be tomato soup or something, but I didn't see him bring in any tomatoes. I'm guessing that was just a cover and that it is going to be a surprise.

Sleeping with Soup.

Its Sunday night and I'm at the office, like I have been for the past four nights. I have learned to live here. I think if I brought in a sleeping bag I could unfurl it underneath my desk and nobody would even know . . . and then I wouldn't even have to think or worry about the commute home. It's getting boring here, and I had to take a break, so I thought I would write something. The only thing I have to look forward to for the rest of the day, is that John said he was making soup for dinner tonight, and he making at my place so I don't even have to walk up the street to get it. He said it'd be ready when I got home . . . whenever that is. I wonder what kind it is . . . he makes such good soup, with little chunks of everything fresh and delicious. Plus, its like 20 degrees outside with this nasty biting wind. It makes the day even worse.

Ugh. I Need a Vacation.

I'm probably not going to get to write anything for a while, seeing as finals are beginning next week. Therefore, I'm going to be a little busy, with students trying to study and myself trying to study. I don't know how I am going to juggle it all, but I suppose I'll manage. See you in two weeks, by the 15th I'll be out of this mess and onto trying to wind down and relax.

Cats Like Chicken Liver.

I'm back at it at school . . . yay. Even though I forwent the holiday . . . I ended up eating oatmeal with a side of chicken liver (yeah, I know, its a weird combination) while lounging on the sofa . . . I did enjoy the break that came with it. I stayed up late and woke up early without feeling the repercussions that I would have been allowed if classes were in session. However, there is s half-sort-of downfall: I am now feeling the aftermath of those choices . . . I mean its 1 o'clock and I can't keep my eyes open. Its not natural. I think I'll take a nap.

Smog: How I Remembered That I Really Hated The LAX And Really Loved Those Fluffy White Pillows.

I got back from LA at 10:00 last night. There were a whole bunch of delays at the airport and I had this crazy layover in Denver. I don't know what cause the delays, but I am supposing that it was this thick smoggy, foggy, cloud layer that was laying low over the city. Once the plane went up through it, it looked like gray snow from above, laying peacefully on the ground below with the little peaks of mountainous ridges pushing through. It was kind of beautiful . . . at least until I remember that it wasn't fog but smog.

The airport was just as I remembered it: crazy, dirty, crazy. I was almost glad to get out of their and then onto the plane. Or at least I was until I found out the the plane was packed. Then I took back all of my wishes. Ugh, now I am just sleepy. That two hour time difference took its toll on me. I met up with some other colleagues from the region that I had congregated with in the past, and they were going on and on about going to this place and that place. I finally just had to say "Hey, I've gotta go. Your midnight is my 2 am and I can't handle that right now." Good thing they didn't put up a fight or I would've had to pull out my mean-tired-side.

And, oh, the HOTEL . . . better known as the Kingdom in the Clouds. I have never slept in a bed like that in all of my life. As a po' girl, I sleep in the wagon if I'm on an over night trip . . . the seats fold down . . . or if I really have to I'll go to one of those mold-on-the-walls-bugs-in-the-showers kind of cheap cheap motels. This was not a "cheap cheap motel." This was one those revolving-gold-door-bellhop-in-the-foyer-feather-pillow kind of hotels. The bed was so cushy. I just wanted to wrap myself up in those fluffy white sheets and die (in the good sense).

Hmm . . . I guess I should say something about the lectures and whatnot, but there wasn't anything of interest.

Thanks for 200 Years of Repression

I can't sleep. I was just thinking about how once I get back from LA that I will get to have a break from classes, thanksgiving break. I have resolved that I do not support thanksgiving day. I came to this conclusion a long time ago and have since stopped celebrating the holiday. Here is the reason:

Seeing the basis that the entire holiday was founded, people usually ask me why I am so unpatriotic towards the idea of the genial helping of the natives towards those poor starving Anglos. After long thought I decided that the entire basis of the holiday was and is a sham. As a native person myself (I'm registered through tribe and everything . . . and my native blood is actually the reason Mr. Gates gave me a scholarship,) I feel that it seems a little contradictory for me to support the Anglo in his bountiful celebration provided by the harvest of my people when during the next 200 years, Mr. Anglo would make it his priority to crush out and kill all remnants of my culture. The way I am interpreting it . . . natives gave their harvest as a gift to share (as the story goes) and apparently the Anglos were picky and didn't like it, or maybe they found a hair in their food, so they reaped savage slaughter upon all natives in the coming future (this is the part of the story they don't tell you . . . the curtain just falls as the meal is served and we all assume it worked out fine.) So the question is why would any reasonable person think that I would want to support that?

Why would anyone support the restrictions of a person's rights until the reforms of the 1970's and beyond? Maybe I am just taking the entire issue out of hand, but ever since I was eight and was forced to be subjected in a school play to the stereotypical generalizations that have been and were made about my culture, it just infuriates me a little bit that people always conveniently forget that their thankful nation was built on greed and plundering at the expense of the native peoples. I suppose that is why all those people with Anglo-dominant views towards immigration puzzle me. I just want to say: hey, if you're trying to keep the roots of founding America . . . you might as well go back to Europe as well. However, that's an entirely new issue, in which I have not the time or effort to discuss.

Mr. Gates and the LAX.

I think today is a good time for my yearly thanking of Mr. Gates. Most people think I'm rash for thanking him, seeing as he is a giant corporate mogul, but I have to say that I owe everything in my life to Mr. Gates . . . well maybe not everything, but a lot of most of it. He paid for the entirety of my education, and is still paying for it (thankfully). Therefore I think that for just one day a year, I should thank him for the hundreds of thousands he has devoted towards myself, because I can frankly say that without him I would never have went to college (I couldn't afford it by any means) and would now be stuck at some dead job pushing numbers for some other corporate person that cares even less about my existence.

Oh, and on further note. I'm leaving for LA on Thursday to go to that conference, I hope it is enjoyable (cough, HA) or is at least as enjoyable as Chicago was. I have to say that I am not a big fan of LA, though. Its a boring city to me, no character, no charm, more equivalent to the heart of evil takeover (yeah, I watched that documentary on how LA was born out of the deception towards farmers and the damming of a river that led to the destruction of subsequent miles of farmland . . . it very informative). However, I've actually never been there . . . with exception to the hours I've spent in LAX, on the shuttle to a hotel, and in a hotel. So, I suppose that is what makes it kind of boring. Eh, its all the same isn't it?

What Can I Say . . . Oatmeal?

You know you've sunk low, when for dinner, all there is, is oatmeal . . . and even worse is when you actually start craving it like I did. Ugh. I'm a hopeless case . . . I kind of don't even feel bad saying that I enjoyed it, in all its mushy bliss.

Being a Fruit-Enthusiast.

Now I know, I am very . . . particular . . . about my fruits. I just love them so, which is something that every now and then gets some sort of off hand comment meaning to hit me in the low end by calling me "weird." Being a fruit lover does not make me weird . . . it makes me . . . neurotic. I spent three hours at the market today trying to decide what to get. I was craving a perfect pomegranate but the ones they had were a little too mushy for my taste. The bananas were over-ripe . . . and the kiwi . . . they didn't even merit words. I had to settle for some grapes.

Ah! How I love a good grape! They must be some semblance of a heaven on earth. I went with a bag of red Concords. I also picked up some blueberries. I had some on the ride home . . . delicious. I was planning on smashing some up with a bit of pomegranate (but you see how that worked out) to make quite a fruitful (HA) smoothie, seeing how that's the new fruit trend these days. Yesterday it was strawberry-banana (yeck!) and today all I'm am seeing on the the shelves of fruit juices is something with a blend of blueberry-pomegranate.

I don't know what the deal is. I can't believe I am actually rambling about fruit. I've lost it. Oh yeah, I put in some good pictures. They make my mouth water.

"Death of the Moth" by Woolf.

Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths; they do not excite that pleasant sense of dark autumn nights and ivy–blossom which the commonest yellow–underwing asleep in the shadow of the curtain never fails to rouse in us. They are hybrid creatures, neither gay like butterflies nor sombre like their own species. Nevertheless the present specimen, with his narrow hay–coloured wings, fringed with a tassel of the same colour, seemed to be content with life. It was a pleasant morning, mid–September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than that of the summer months. The plough was already scoring the field opposite the window, and where the share had been, the earth was pressed flat and gleamed with moisture. Such vigour came rolling in from the fields and the down beyond that it was difficult to keep the eyes strictly turned upon the book. The rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring round the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it. Then, suddenly, the net would be thrown into the air again in a wider circle this time, with the utmost clamour and vociferation, as though to be thrown into the air and settle slowly down upon the tree tops were a tremendously exciting experience.

The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the horses, and even, it seemed, the lean bare–backed downs, sent the moth fluttering from side to side of his square of the window–pane. One could not help watching him. One was, indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth’s part in life, and a day moth’s at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second, flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far–off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What he could do he did. Watching him, it seemed as if a fibre, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body. As often as he crossed the pane, I could fancy that a thread of vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but life.

Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the energy that was rolling in at the open window and driving its way through so many narrow and intricate corridors in my own brain and in those of other human beings, there was something marvellous as well as pathetic about him. It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig–zagging to show us the true nature of life. Thus displayed one could not get over the strangeness of it. One is apt to forget all about life, seeing it humped and bossed and garnished and cumbered so that it has to move with the greatest circumspection and dignity. Again, the thought of all that life might have been had he been born in any other shape caused one to view his simple activities with a kind of pity.

After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an end, I forgot about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window–pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed. Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.

The legs agitated themselves once more. I looked as if for the enemy against which he struggled. I looked out of doors. What had happened there? Presumably it was midday, and work in the fields had stopped. Stillness and quiet had replaced the previous animation. The birds had taken themselves off to feed in the brooks. The horses stood still. Yet the power was there all the same, massed outside indifferent, impersonal, not attending to anything in particular. Somehow it was opposed to the little hay–coloured moth. It was useless to try to do anything. One could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings; nothing, I knew, had any chance against death. Nevertheless after a pause of exhaustion the legs fluttered again. It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he succeeded at last in righting himself. One’s sympathies, of course, were all on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody to care or to know, this gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one strangely. Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange. The moth having righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am.

I thought that I would post this since I really liked it. Virginia Woolf inspires me in some . . . unknown way. I think it has something to do with her ability to use words in a way that I could never imagine to use them. They flow through with her voice in such an indescribable way.

SEE.

So yeah. Things haven't gotten any better . . . actually worse since the end of the semester is approaching and now everything is turning into crunch and cram time. To kind of lessen this strain on myself . . . (otherwise make myself think the strain is less) . . . I provided a nice pretty picture with this post. See, isn't it nice? It is a bit of work done by William S. Burroughs (yeah, I know, the writer . . . turned artist . . . artist in the later years of his life) . . . . . . (He used to take shotguns and shoot paint cans onto canvases . . . and then scribble a little bit on top.)

. . . I am knitting a hat to stay focused.

Hiya. I have been in a hole lately. I don't know why. Its just like everything was on the top of the world and then, BAM, the big crunch happens and everything wiped out. I think I have pinpointed the cause. A certain someone admitted certain "emotions" and well . . . that created a muddle. . . seeing how it makes me obligated to return said "emotions." The problem: I gave up on "emotions" a long time ago, too much of a hassle, so I became aemotional towards everyone ( . . . get the tricksy wordplay? its not a typo . . . ) I told said person about this and he thinks I'm lying, I believe the phrase was "jeez, if you're going to lie to me at least make-up a believable story . . . what do you take me for, a stupid?" It kind of sucks.

On a good note, however, I get to go to a conference in Los Angeles in two weeks. Exciting.

The Dregs (How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dregs).

I haven't posted anything in a couple of a couple of days. I guess I got a little blogged out (you know, too much of a good thing . . . whatever. I suppose that now would be the time to write something groundbreaking and "on the edge" since that has been my thing lately. However, just this is going to suffice for now, because all I really wanted to do was write something so it didn't seem like I was dead . . . or incapacitated. Whichever. Whatever.

Squid.

On a lighter note from all of this education dribble, I ate some really nice grapes today paired with some spectacular kiwi. I also got my hands on a copy of Pincher Martin by William Golding. I started hopping up and down when I saw it on the shelves. A lady had to ask me if I was okay. I told her to pinch me me because I wasn't sure if I was alive. She did and it kind of hurt.

I just thought you might like to know.

Education Continuation.

Due to a recent outrage caused by the education system I am also going to be devoting this post to another article that I think effectivately uses satire to make a very just point. It is a bit long but worth the entire read. So, without further ado, here in John Taylor Gatto's essay "The Seven-Lesson Schooteacher" :

Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do at the time, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. The license I hold certifies that I am an instructor of English language and English literature, but that isn't what I do at all. I don't teach English, I teach school -- and I win awards doing it.
Teaching means different things in different places, but seven lessons are universally taught from Harlem to Hollywood Hills. They constitute a national curriculum you pay for in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what it is. You are at liberty, of course, to regard these lessons any way you like, but believe me when I say I intend no irony in this presentation. These are the things I teach, these are the things you pay me to teach. Make of them what you will.

1. CONFUSION
A lady named Kathy wrote this to me from Dubois, Indiana the other day:

"What big ideas are important to little kids? Well, the biggest idea I think they need is that what they are learning isn't idiosyncratic -- that there is some system to it all and it's not just raining down on them as they helplessly absorb. That's the task, to understand, to make coherent."
Kathy has it wrong. The first lesson I teach is confusion. Everything I teach is out of context. I teach the un-relating of everything. I teach disconnections. I teach too much: the orbiting of planets, the law of large numbers, slavery, adjectives, architectural drawing, dance, gymnasium, choral singing, assemblies, surprise guests, fire drills, computer languages, parents' nights, staff-development days, pull-out programs, guidance with strangers my students may never see again, standardized tests, age-segregation unlike anything seen in the outside world....What do any of these things have to do with each other?
Even in the best schools a close examination of curriculum and its sequences turns up a lack of coherence, full of internal contradictions. Fortunately the children have no words to define the panic and anger they feel at constant violations of natural order and sequence fobbed off on them as quality in education. The logic of the school-mind is that it is better to leave school with a tool kit of superficial jargon derived from economics, sociology, natural science and so on than to leave with one genuine enthusiasm. But quality in education entails learning about something in depth. Confusion is thrust upon kids by too many strange adults, each working alone with only the thinnest relationship with each other, pretending for the most part, to an expertise they do not possess.
Meaning, not disconnected facts, is what sane human beings seek, and education is a set of codes for processing raw facts into meaning. Behind the patchwork quilt of school sequences and the school obsession with facts and theories, the age-old human search lies well concealed. This is harder to see in elementary school where the hierarchy of school experience seems to make better sense because the good-natured simple relationship of "let's do this" and "let's do that" is just assumed to mean something and the clientele has not yet consciously discerned how little substance is behind the play and pretense.
Think of the great natural sequences like learning to walk and learning to talk; following the progression of light from sunrise to sunset; witnessing the ancient procedures of a farmer, a smithy, or a shoemaker; watching your mother prepare a Thanksgiving feast -- all of the parts are in perfect harmony with each other, each action justifies itself and illuminates the past and the future. School sequences aren't like that, not inside a single class and not among the total menu of daily classes. School sequences are crazy. There is no particular reason for any of them, nothing that bears close scrutiny. Few teachers would dare to teach the tools whereby dogmas of a school or a teacher could be criticized since everything must be accepted. School subjects are learned, if they can be learned, like children learn the catechism or memorize the Thirty-nine Articles of Anglicanism.
I teach the un-relating of everything, an infinite fragmentation the opposite of cohesion; what I do is more related to television programming than to making a scheme of order. In a world where home is only a ghost, because both parents work, or because too many moves or too many job changes or too much ambition, or because something else has left everybody too confused to maintain a family relation, I teach you how to accept confusion as your destiny. That's the first lesson I teach.

2. CLASS POSITION
The second lesson I teach is class position. I teach that students must stay in the class where they belong. I don't know who decides my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered by schools has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human beings plainly under the weight of numbers they carry. Numbering children is a big and very profitable undertaking, though what the strategy is designed to accomplish is elusive. I don't even know why parents would, without a fight, allow it to be done to their kids.
In any case, again, that's not my business. My job is to make them like it, being locked in together with children who bear numbers like their own. Or at the least to endure it like good sports. If I do my job well, the kids can't even imagine themselves somewhere else, because I've shown them how to envy and fear the better classes and how to have contempt for the dumb classes. Under this efficient discipline the class mostly polices itself into good marching order. That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.
In spite of the overall class blueprint, which assumes that ninety-nine percent of the kids are in their class to stay, I nevertheless make a public effort to exhort children to higher levels of test success, hinting at eventual transfer from the lower class as a reward. I frequently insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores and grades, even though my own experience is that employers are rightly indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I've come to see that truth and schoolteaching are, at bottom, incompatible just as Socrates said they were thousands of years ago. The lesson of numbered classes is that everyone has a proper place in the pyramid and that there is no way out of your class except by number magic. Failing that, you must stay where you are put.

3. INDIFFERENCE
The third lesson I teach kids is indifference. I teach children not to care about anything too much, even though they want to make it appear that they do. How I do this is very subtle. I do it by demanding that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously with each other for my favor. It's heartwarming when they do that; it impresses everyone, even me. When I'm at my best I plan lessons very carefully in order to produce this show of enthusiasm. But when the bell rings I insist that they stop whatever it is that we've been working on and proceed quickly to the next work station. They must turn on and off like a light switch. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of. Students never have a complete experience except on the installment plan.
Indeed, the lesson of the bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Years of bells will condition all but the strongest to a world that can no longer offer important work to do. Bells are the secret logic of schooltime; their logic is inexorable. Bells destroy the past and future, converting every interval into a sameness, as the abstraction of a map renders every living mountain and river the same, even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.

4. EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCY
The fourth lesson I teach is emotional dependency. By stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors and disgraces I teach kids to surrender their will to the predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld by any authority without appeal, because rights do not exist inside a school -- not even the right of free speech, as the Supreme Court has ruled -- unless school authorities say they do. As a schoolteacher, I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a pass for those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. Individuality is constantly trying to assert itself among children and teenagers, so my judgments come thick and fast. Individuality is a contradiction of class theory, a curse to all systems of classification.
Here are some common ways it shows up: children sneak away for a private moment in the toilet on the pretext of moving their bowels, or they steal a private instant in the hallway on the grounds they need water. I know they don't, but I allow them to deceive me because this conditions them to depend on my favors. Sometimes free will appears right in front of me in children angry, depressed or happy about things outside my ken; rights in such matters cannot be recognized by schoolteachers, only privileges that can be withdrawn, hostages to good behavior.

5. INTELLECTUAL DEPENDENCY
The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency. Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. It is the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. The expert makes all the important choices; only I, the teacher, can determine what you must study, or rather, only the people who pay me can make those decisions which I then enforce. If I'm told that evolution is a fact instead of a theory, I transmit that as ordered, punishing deviants who resist what I have been told to tell them to think. This power to control what children will think lets me separate successful students from failures very easily.
Successful children do the thinking I appoint them with a minimum of resistance and a decent show of enthusiasm. Of the millions of things of value to study, I decide what few we have time for, or actually it is decided by my faceless employers. The choices are theirs, why should I argue? Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.
Bad kids fight this, of course, even though they lack the concepts to know what they are fighting, struggling to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn and when they will learn it. How can we allow that and survive as schoolteachers? Fortunately there are procedures to break the will of those who resist; it is more difficult, naturally, if the kid has respectable parents who come to his aid, but that happens less and less in spite of the bad reputation of schools. No middle-class parents I have ever met actually believe that their kid's school is one of the bad ones. Not one single parent in twenty-six years of teaching. That's amazing and probably the best testimony to what happens to families when mother and father have been well-schooled themselves, learning the seven lessons.
Good people wait for an expert to tell them what to do. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends upon this lesson being learned. Think of what would fall apart if kids weren't trained to be dependent: the social-service businesses could hardly survive; they would vanish, I think, into the recent historical limbo out of which they arose. Counselors and therapists would look on in horror as the supply of psychic invalids vanished. Commercial entertainment of all sorts, including television, would wither as people learned again how to make their own fun. Restaurants, prepared-food and a whole host of other assorted food services would be drastically down-sized if people returned to making their own meals rather than depending on strangers to plant, pick, chop, and cook for them. Much of modern law, medicine, and engineering would go too, the clothing business and schoolteaching as well, unless a guaranteed supply of helpless people continued to pour out of our schools each year.
Don't be too quick to vote for radical school reform if you want to continue getting a paycheck. We've built a way of life that depends on people doing what they are told because they don't know how to tell themselves what to do. It's one of the biggest lessons I teach.

6. PROVISIONAL SELF-ESTEEM
The sixth lesson I teach is provisional self-esteem. If you've ever tried to wrestle a kid into line whose parents have convinced him to believe they'll love him in spite of anything, you know how impossible it is to make self-confident spirits conform. Our world wouldn't survive a flood of confident people very long, so I teach that your self-respect should depend on expert opinion. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged.
A monthly report, impressive in its provision, is sent into students' homes to signal approval or to mark exactly, down to a single percentage point, how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. The ecology of "good" schooling depends upon perpetuating dissatisfaction just as much as the commercial economy depends on the same fertilizer. Although some people might be surprised how little time or reflection goes into making up these mathematical records, the cumulative weight of the objective-seeming documents establishes a profile that compels children to arrive at certain decisions about themselves and their futures based on the casual judgment of strangers. Self-evaluation, the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet, is never considered a factor. The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.

7. ONE CAN'T HIDE
The seventh lesson I teach is that one can't hide. I teach children they are always watched, that each is under constant surveillance by myself and my colleagues. There are no private spaces for children, there is no private time. Class change lasts three hundred seconds to keep promiscuous fraternization at low levels. Students are encouraged to tattle on each other or even to tattle on their own parents. Of course, I encourage parents to file their own child's waywardness too. A family trained to snitch on itself isn't likely to conceal any dangerous secrets.
I assign a type of extended schooling called "homework," so that the effect of surveillance, if not that surveillance itself, travels into private households, where students might otherwise use free time to learn something unauthorized from a father or mother, by exploration, or by apprenticing to some wise person in the neighborhood. Disloyalty to the idea of schooling is a Devil always ready to find work for idle hands.
The meaning of constant surveillance and denial of privacy is that no one can be trusted, that privacy is not legitimate. Surveillance is an ancient imperative, espoused by certain influential thinkers, a central prescription set down in The Republic, in The City of God, in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, in New Atlantis, in Leviathan, and in a host of other places. All these childless men who wrote these books discovered the same thing: children must be closely watched if you want to keep a society under tight central control. Children will follow a private drummer if you can't get them into a uniformed marching band.

II
It is the great triumph of compulsory government monopoly mass-schooling that among even the best of my fellow teachers, and among the best of my students' parents, only a small number can imagine a different way to do things. "The kids have to know how to read and write, don't they?" "They have to know how to add and subtract, don't they?" "They have to learn to follow orders if they ever expect to keep a job."
Only a few lifetimes ago things were very different in the United States. Originality and variety were common currency; our freedom from regimentation made us the miracle of the world; social-class boundaries were relatively easy to cross; our citizenry was marvelously confident, inventive, and able to do much for themselves independently, and to think for themselves. We were something special, we Americans, all by ourselves, without government sticking its nose into our lives, without institutions and social agencies telling us how to think and feel. We were something special, as individuals, as Americans.
But we've had a society essentially under central control in the United States since just before the Civil War, and such a society requires compulsory schooling, government monopoly schooling, to maintain itself. Before this development schooling wasn't very important anywhere. We had it, but not too much of it, and only as much as an individual wanted. People learned to read, write, and do arithmetic just fine anyway; there are some studies that suggest literacy at the time of the American Revolution, at least for non-slaves on the Eastern seaboard, was close to total. Thomas Paine's Common Sense sold 600,000 copies to a population of 3,000,000, twenty percent of whom were slaves, and fifty percent indentured servants.
Were the colonists geniuses? No, the truth is that reading, writing, and arithmetic only take about one hundred hours to transmit as long as the audience is eager and willing to learn. The trick is to wait until someone asks and then move fast while the mood is on. Millions of people teach themselves these things, it really isn't very hard. Pick up a fifth-grade math or rhetoric textbook from 1850 and you'll see that the texts were pitched then on what would today be considered college level. The continuing cry for "basic skills" practice is a smoke screen behind which schools preempt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the seven lessons I've just described to you.
The society that has become increasingly under central control since just before the Civil War shows itself in the lives we lead, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the green highway signs we drive by from coast to coast, all of which are the products of this control. So, too, I think, are the epidemics of drugs, suicide, divorce, violence, cruelty, and the hardening of class into caste in the United States products of the dehumanization of our lives, the lessening of individual, family, and community importance, a diminishment that proceeds from central control. The character of large compulsory institutions is inevitable; they want more and more until there isn't any more to give. School takes our children away from any possibility of an active role in community life -- in fact it destroys communities by relegating the training of children to the hands of certified experts -- and by doing so it ensures our children cannot grow up fully human. Aristotle taught that without a fully active role in community life one could not hope to become a healthy human being. Surely he was right. Look around you the next time you are near a school or an old people's reservation if you wish a demonstration.
School as it was built is an essential support system for a vision of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows as it ascends to a terminal of control. School is an artifice which makes such a pyramidical social order seem inevitable, although such a premise is a fundamental betrayal of the American Revolution. From colonial days through the period of the Republic we had no schools to speak of -- read Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography for an example of a man who had no time to waste in school -- and yet the promise of Democracy was beginning to be realized. We turned our backs on this promise by bringing to life the ancient pharaonic dream of Egypt: compulsory subordination for all. That was the secret Plato reluctantly transmitted in The Republic when Glaucon and Adeimantus exhorted from Socrates the plan for total state control of human life, a plan necessary to maintain a society where some people take more than their share. "I will show you," says Socrates, "how to bring about such a feverish city, but you will not like what I am going to say." And so the blueprint of the seven-lesson school was first sketched.
The current debate about whether we should have a national curriculum is phony. We already have a national curriculum locked up in the seven lessons I have just outlined. Such a curriculum produces physical, moral, and intellectual paralysis, and no curriculum of content will be sufficient to reverse its hideous effects. What is currently under discussion in our national school hysteria about failing academic performance misses the point. Schools teach exactly what they are intended to teach and they do it well: how to be a good Egyptian and remain in your place in the pyramid.

III
None of this is inevitable. None of it is impossible to overthrow. We do have choices in how we bring up young people; there is no one right way. If we broke through the power of the pyramidical illusion we would see that. There is no life-and-death international competition threatening our national existence, difficult as that idea is even to think about, let alone believe, in the face of a continual media barrage of myth to the contrary. In every important material respect our nation is self-sufficient, including in energy. I realize that idea runs counter to the most fashionable thinking of political economists, but the "profound transformation" of our economy these people talk about is neither inevitable nor irreversible. Global economics does not speak to the public need for meaningful work, affordable housing, fulfilling education, adequate medical care, a clean environment, honest and accountable government, social and cultural renewal, or simple justice. All global ambitions are based on a definition of productivity and the good life so alienated from common human reality I am convinced it is wrong and that most people would agree with me if they could perceive an alternative. We might be able to see that if we regained a hold on a philosophy that locates meaning where meaning is genuinely to be found -- in families, in friends, in the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in curiosity, generosity, compassion, and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy, in all the free and inexpensive things out of which real families, real friends and real communities are built -- then we would be so self-sufficient we would not even need the material "sufficiency" which our global "experts" are so insistent we be concerned about.
How did these awful places, these "schools", come about? Well, casual schooling has always been with us in a variety of forms, a mildly useful adjunct to growing up. But "modern schooling" as we know it is a by-product of the two "Red Scares" of 1848 and 1919, when powerful interests feared a revolution among our own industrial poor. Partly, too, total schooling came about because old-line American families were appauled by the native cultures of Celtic, Slavic, and Latin immigrants of the 1840s and felt repugnance towards the Catholic religion they brought with them. Certainly a third contributing factor in creating a jail for children called school must have been the consternation with which these same "Americans" regarded the movement of African-Americans through the society in the wake of the Civil War.
Look again at the seven lessons of schoolteaching: confusion, class position, indifference, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, surveillance -- all of these things are prime training for permanent underclasses, people deprived forever of finding the center of their own special genius. And over time this training has shaken loose from its own original logic: to regulate the poor. For since the 1920s the growth of the school bureaucracy, and the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling exactly as it is, has enlarged this institution's original grasp to the point that it now seizes the sons and daughters of the middle classes as well.
Is it any wonder Socrates was outraged at the accusation that he took money to teach? Even then, philosophers saw clearly the inevitable direction the professionalization of teaching would take, preempting the teaching function, which belongs to everyone in a healthy community.
With lessons like the ones I teach day after day it should be little wonder we have a real national crisis, the nature of which is very different from that proclaimed by the national media. Young people are indifferent to the adult world and to the future, indifferent to almost everything except the diversion of toys and violence. Rich or poor, schoolchildren who face the twenty-first century cannot concentrate on anything for very long; they have a poor sense of time past and time to come. They are mistrustful of intimacy like the children of divorce they really are (for we have divorced them from significant parental attention); they hate solitude, are cruel, materialistic, dependent, passive, violent, timid in the face of the unexpected, addicted to distraction.
All the peripheral tendencies of childhood are nourished and magnified to a grotesque extent by schooling, which, through its hidden curriculum, prevents effective personality development. Indeed, without exploiting the fearfulness, selfishness, and inexperience of children, our schools could not survive at all, nor could I as a certified schoolteacher. No common school that actually dared to teach the use of critical thinking tools -- like the dialectic, the heuristic, or other devices that free minds should employ -- would last very long before being torn to pieces. School has become the replacement for church in our secular society, and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken on faith.
It is time that we squarely face the fact that institutional schoolteaching is destructive to children. Nobody survives the seven-lesson curriculum completely unscathed, not even the instructors. The method is deeply and profoundly anti-educational. No tinkering will fix it. In one of the great ironies of human affairs, the massive rethinking the schools require would cost so much less than we are spending now that powerful interests cannot afford to let it happen. You must understand that first and foremost the business I am in is a jobs project and an agency for letting contracts. We cannot afford to save money by reducing the scope of our operation or by diversifying the product we offer, even to help children grow up right. That is the iron law of institutional schooling -- it is a business, subject neither to normal accounting procedures nor to the rational scalpel of competition.
Some form of free-market system in public schooling is the likeliest place to look for answers, a free market where family schools and small entrepreneurial schools and religious schools and crafts schools and farm schools exist in profusion to compete with government education. I'm trying to describe a free market in schooling just exactly like the one the country had until the Civil War, one in which students volunteer for the kind of education that suits them, even if that means self-education; it didn't hurt Benjamin Franklin that I can see. These options exist now in miniature, wonderful survivals of a strong and vigorous past, but they are available only to the resourceful, the courageous, the lucky, or the rich. The near impossibility of one of these better roads opening for the shattered families of the poor or for the bewildered host camped on the fringes of the urban middle class suggests that the disaster of seven-lesson schools is going to grow unless we do something bold and decisive with the mess of government monopoly schooling.
After an adult lifetime spent teaching school, I believe the method of mass-schooling is its only real content. Don't be fooled into thinking that good curriculum or good equipment or good teachers are the critical determinants of your son's or daughter's education. All the pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments with themselves and with their families to learn lessons in self-motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity, and love -- and lessons in service to others, too, which are among the key lessons of home and community life.
Thirty years ago [in the early 60s] these things could still be learned in the time left after school. But television has eaten up most of that time, and a combination of television and the stresses peculiar to two-income or single-parent families have swallowed up most of what used to be family time as well. Our kids have no time left to grow up fully human and only thin-soil wastelands to do it in.
A future is rushing down upon our culture which will insist all of us learn the wisdom of non-material experience; a future which will demand as the price of survival that we follow a path of natural life economical in material cost. These lessons cannot be learned in schools as they are. School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.

I hope you liked it. I am not going to put my comments in the post however, due to the large amount of space; instead, I am going to put my comments on it in the comments section. Ta-ta.

Education on Mango Street.

At 1 a.m. this morning I finished those tricky-sticky essays, and after stuff strenuous reading, I daresay think that I can admit how bad the education system really is. I have never seen so many spelling errors, grammatical errors, mechanics errors. Must I say that I actually read something were the word "I" was used over and over (given that is is academic writing the word I was prohibited) and this is what gets me even more, the person even forgot to capitalize sometime.

What is happening? Yes, I will admit there were a outstanding essays that brightened up the long night of reading, but they were few and far between. I don't know what happened . . . or maybe the problem has been that it has always been happening and we fail to notice it through our blindness. Either way here is a great essay on the topic . . . well it is essentially on the topic . . . and I like it enough so that I don't care if it is on topic. The essay is by Sandra Cisneros and is an excerpt from her introduction to her own book The House on Mango Street, so shoot:

It’s been ten year since The House on Mango Street was first published. I began writing it in graduate school, the spring of 1977, in Iowa City. I was twenty-two years old.

When I began writing The House on Mango Street, I thought I was writing a memoir. By the time I finished it, my memoir was no longer a memoir, no longer autobiographical. It had evolved into a collective story people with several lives from my past and present, placed in one fictional time and neighborhood—Mango Street.

A story is like a Giacometti Sculpture. The farther it is away from you, the clearer you can see it. In Iowa City, I was undergoing several changes of identity. For the first time I was living alone, in a community very different in class and culture from the one where I was raised. This caused so much unrest I could barely speak, let alone write about it. The story I was living at twenty-two would have to wait, but I could take the story of the earlier place, an earlier voice, and record that on paper.

The voice of Mango Street and all my work was born at one moment, when I realized I was different. This sounds absurd and simple, but until Iowa City, I assumed the world was like Chicago, made up of people of many cultures all living together—albeit not happily at times but still coexisting. In Iowa, I was suddenly aware of feeling odd when I spoke, as if I were a foreigner. But this was my land too. This is not to say I hadn’t felt it quite as keenly as I did in graduate school. I couldn’t quite articulate what it was that was happening, except I knew that I felt ashamed when I spoke in class, so I chose not to speak.

I can say my political consciousness began the moment I recognized my otherness. I was in a graduate seminar on memory and imagination. The books required were Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak Memory, Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa, and Gaston Bachelard’s Poetic or Space. I enjoyed the first two, but as usual I said nothing, just listened to the dialogue around me, too afraid to speak. The third book, though, left me baffled. I assumed I just didn’t get it because I wasn’t as smart as everyone else, and if I didn’t say anything, maybe no one else would notice.

The conversation, I remember, was about the house of memory—the attic, the stairwells, the cellar. Attic? My family lived in third-floor flats for the most part, because noise traveled down. Stairwells reeked of Pine Sol from the Saturday scrubbing. We shared them with the people downstairs, they were public zones no one except us thought to clean. We moped them all right, but not with resentment for cleaning up some other people’s trash. And as for cellars, we had a basement, but who’s want to hide in there? Basements were filled with urban fauna. Everyone was so scared to go in there including the meter reader and the landlord. What was this guy Bachelard talking about when he mentioned familiar and comforting homes of memory? It was obvious he never had to clean one or pay the landlord rent for one like ours.

Then it occurred to me that none of the books in this class or in any of my classes, in all the years of my education, had ever discussed a house like mine. Not in books or magazines or films. My classmates had comes from real houses, real neighborhoods, ones they could point to , but what did I know?

I went home that evening and realized my education had been a lie—had made presumptions about what was “normal,” what was American, what was valuable—I wanted to quit school right then and there, but I didn’t. Instead, I got angry, and anger when it is used to act, when it is used nonviolently, has power. I asked myself what I could write about that my classmates could not. I didn’t know what I wanted exactly, but I did have enough sense to know what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to sound like my classmates; I didn’t want to keep imitating the writers I had been reading. Their voices were right for them but not for me.

Instead, I searched for the “ugliest” subjects I could find, the most un-“poetic”—slang, monologues in which waitresses or kids talked about their own lives. I was trying as best I could to write the kind of book I had never seen in a library or in a school, the kind of book not even my professors could write. Each week I ingested the class readings and then went off and did the opposite. It was a quiet revolution, perhaps a reaction taken to extremes, but it was out of this negative experience that I found something positive: my voice.

At one time or another, we all have felt other. When I teach writing, I tell the story of the moment of discovering and naming my otherness. It is not enough simply to sense it; it has to be named, and then written about from there. Once I could name it, I ceased being ashamed and silent. I could speak up and celebrate my otherness as a woman, as a working-class person, as an American of Mexican descent. When I recognized the place where I departed from my neighbors, my classmates, my family, my town, my brothers, when I discovered what I knew that no one else in the room knew, and then spoke it in a voice that was my own voice, the voice I used when I was sitting in the kitchen, dressed in my pajamas, talking over the table littered with cups and dishes, when I could give myself permission to speak from that intimate space, then I could talk and sound like myself, not like me trying to sound like someone I wasn’t. Then I could speak, shout, laugh from a place that was uniquely mine, that was no one else’s in the history of the universe, that would never be anyone else’s, ever.

So how was it enjoyable? I thought so and it also make you think about the own quality of your education, because I think she points out quite effectively that does not make exceptions for the cultural differences of our backgrounds.

Hmmm. . . well, I liked it and I suppose that is all that matters.

Cough. Hiccup. Cough.

I have been . . . frustrated at work and school this week (yeah, I am aware that it is still Monday.) However, when you get something around 100+ essays to grade . . . painstakingly if I might add (I begin to question their intelligence entirely once it becomes evident they don't know know to work the 'spell check' option) . . . tell me about it and try to make it sound enjoyable, because I know it isn't. Then there is the entirely opposite issue . . . those deadly essays I have to write. It is not looking good in my future.

I told John to ring my line next week with the hope that I'm still alive.

Ha . . . and my doctor told me to stop stressing, albeit the shingles incident.
Given the circumstances . . . I think I am doing pretty well.

Aorta, Please Do not Dissect.

I got roped into going to some heart-healthy-info-session-vigil today. So I spent of the whole time walking through tables and such, all with big posters of mangled hearts, clotted veins, and arteries lined with fats. For some reason pictures of internal body parts give me the heebee-jeebies. I can't stand them; they give me irrational chest pains accompanied by a sort of nausea. It doesn't feel good.

This Thriving Plague.

My favorite pair of blue jeans has developed a hole. This is infinitely depressing to me, another pair soon to fade away, and only give me a cause to head back to the gates of the clothing department hell to buy another pair that won't fit the same, feel the same, wear the same, and inevitably will be shoved away into the back end of the closet until I pull them out to wear due the to fact that all the other remaining options have met the same fate as the original favorite blue jean.

The idea of clothing mystifies me. I suppose I don't get the merit of owning more shoes than I count on my fingers and more clothes to than would fill my closet twice over, when in reality people, even those with such an extensive wardrobe, only put to use half of it. Several years ago, I cleaned out my closet, gave everything I didn't use in the day to day rituals to Goodwill, and now I find that I actually put everything to use and I do not buy until I need to buy. People tell me that that is way I always look so shabby and thrown together, however, my response is that that is due to the fact that I always wear tees (which is and entirely different issue, dealing with fashion, not over consumption as this does.)

We over consume, in our clothing, in our diets, in our day to day lifestyles. Its so sad. Now, I must be off to 'over consume' vicious amounts of vodka and loose myself in reality. Ta Ta.

I am a Juvenile.

Oh, my god. DBT last night was wonderful ( I thought I should add that to this post since I mentioned going to see them previously.) On the other end of the line, I am skipping classes and work and everything today. I feel like such a ten-year-old saying that ("skipping classes?" that's what I did in high school,) however its the closest thing to the truth. I am skipping out and not going. I drank a little too much last night. . . and as consequence slept through my alarm anyways. I woke up about thirty minutes ago, which was long enough ago for my to look at myself in the mirror and go 'hell, I look like trash' and curl up on the sofa drinking grape juice. I feel like such a delinquent. Ugh.

DBT and the Polyphonic Spree

I almost forgot! The Drive-by-Truckers are going to Lawrence on Wednesday . . . and then on Saturday the Polyphonic Spree is going to be there. It is going to be the best week of my life. Can't wait to see the Spree's new outfits . . . apparently they went from robes to army uniforms last spring.

Ah. How Nice.

I am leaving Chicago tomorrow. It is so . . . sad? disheartening? I don't know which word is more appropriate to use. Besides for a very boring (and sleepy, if I might add) afternoon and morning listening to people ramble, the trip was very delightful, a free vacation. How nice.

Warped.

I am so glad. . . The Shingles has abated. Now only the the sparse few crusties remain, for which I am very glad. However, in the latest news, I get to go to that conference that I think I spoke of, its in Chicago. I am leaving on a plane tonight. It will be nice to go back, as Chicago was my "stomping ground" for quite a period in my life. I am just trying to forget that I'm going there for a conference, and am thinking of it as more of a vacation to a known land, because, let's face it, conference and lectures. . . are boring. They are, and nobody likes them and people that say the do, are lying to make themselves "appear cool" to everybody else. What I don't get is why they would think that normal people would think that people liking boring speeches are cool. Sounds kind of warped, if you ask me.

Finally.

I am so happy I could cry. . .

I put on my eye-patch and went outside.

I put on my eye patch and got a haircut yesterday. The new cut looks something like the picture to the right, its a little bit shorter . . . (no, that is not me. . . I would have put a picture of myself on here but. . . at this point you don't want to see that. . . might make you lose your lunch.)

Anyways. . . I like the cut. Feels nice. . . and requires less. . . maintenance. (I'm a get up and go kind of person. . . I don't deal with makeup or blow dryers.)

On a more important note, it was very nice going outside and breathing in the fresh non-apartment air. I hadn't been out in four. . . five days, so it was nice to be able to breathe outside the flat. I got a lot of funny looks. . . I suppose people thought I was trying to be a pirate or something, with the eye patch and all, and were just waiting for me to pull out my wooden sword and say "arg."

I think I disappointed the people on the bus when I didn't.

. . . Cornflaked.

I'm feeling better. My face, however, still looks like I have been bashed in the eye with a hairbrush and then tried to cover it up by dusting it with cornflake crumbles. John came over and brought me grapes. . . yum. Nice juicy red grapes. . . they can make anybody feel better.

I'm Subpar.

I thought that I should give you an update on the mass now growing on my face (the shingle problem.) Its definitely shingles. Doctor confirmed it. . . but its not like she really needed to . . . I woke up this morning and couldn't even open my eye as it was glued shut with pus and goo and the shingle-pustule formations had spread to the area underneath my eye and into my eyebrow. It doesn't look pretty. Its. . . very red and. . . gooey. . . and the cornflake crusties haven't even formed on it.

It's not looking good. I cancelled all my appointments, called in work and told them that I was taking the week off. . . at first they were hesitant, but when I told them that my face by an version of the chicken pox (because that's what shingles is) they said please stay away as long as you like. . . or something along those lines. . . I didn't even tell them about the fever.

Yeah. . . about the fever and the vomiting. When to the doctor for that. . . despite my previous protests. . . the doctor rumbled and grumbled about this and that and deduced that I had the stomach flu, said that it should and would go away in a few days if I took some pills. . . then he whipped out his pad and scribbled something down.

So now. . . I'm bored. I think this whole "being ill" thing is not for me. Sitting at home in the peak of the day. . . well. . . it doesn't feel right. But I guess I did get out of making another one of those boring research speeches. I don't think I was the Sickness. . . everything in my life actually is sub par.

The Shingles.

So I've got the shingles. . . again. . . this isn't the first time. At least this is what I have deduced from the beginning formation of pustules on my face/eye region. I know the symptoms by now. . . tingling sensation in the eye region, pustule formation. . . I've had them so many times I can't count it on my fingers. I'm going to the eye doctor tomorrow. . . already made an appointment. . . because I kind of want to look presentable within a week and a half, as I have a conference to go to. . . and I know how shingles on the face puts you back in the "oh, god, what is that!?!" category of presentable-ness. It like someone takes a blender and rolls your face in it and then coats your face with corn flakes to give it that crusty appearance. Inflamed and crusty. Not a good combination.

Oh, by the way, I still have a 101 F temperature and am vomiting quite frequently (I don't know why though, seeing as all the contents of my stomach should have been removed by now) . . . and I don't know the cause of that. . . sure isn't the shingles.

The Sickness.

When I woke up this morning (nearly 3o minutes ago), I realized the strange sensation that running on 4 hours of sleep and a dehydration can give you. Well, it was more of a nauseating effect, rather than a "strange sensation." I felt like I was going to vomit. . . so I did. . . and now I am sitting here coping with that vomit-ous feeling. I ate a mini chocolate doughnut. . . I thought it would help. . . it didn't. Next I drank some apple juice. . . and met the same end.

In 20 minutes, I leave for class. . . one that I would skip, if not for the fact that I have to make a presentation today over my graduate research. . . which is boring as hell and I don't know why anybody would want me to present it. Maybe its just the Sickness speaking, but right now I find everything in my life to be at a little less than sub-par.

Bruised Fruit Never Go Over Well.

It is 12:30 am and I cannot sleep. I am thinking too much. . . thinking about today, tomorrow, about why I keep thinking. Its a tumbling confusing circle at which I meet no end. While at the fruit stand today, I bought some pears. Actually, I didn't buy them, they were free. . . so I loaded up. Now I have three miniture pear pyramids surrounded by assorted fruits (these weren't free) sitting on the living room floor. I just hope that they don't fall over and bruise. Bruised fruit never go over well. Too mushy for my taste.