The Head And The Heart - Down In The Valley (not the video)

#Truth

My, how time flies. 5 days come and gone.

I've fallen in love with this place.

But then again, what do you expect?

I'll always be a gypsy. 

In the Rebuilt Machinery of Our Hearts.

There are those days that bring me back to my writing. That - like running has become for me lately - remind me how much writing is apart of all this for me. 

I've forgotten, despite my many triumphs and personal achievements as of late, how amazing the world is. How individual we are as our own entity, and yet how connected we are as a species on a most scientifically organic level. 

It's been wonderful to visit Jules in New York. While she was in class, I decided to walk the 2 miles through the upper West side to St. Patrick's Cathedral off Madison and then up through Central Park to the Natural History museum. 

I can't definitively say if it was those two destinations that I went consecutively that spurred such a deliberate self-awareness or rather it being only a sudden realization only found while exploring a new city such as I am. Either way, I'm grateful.

Not long ago I was asking myself what the point of all this was. Why should I have to work so hard on such little pay only to have it immediately consumed by debt? What's the point in helping these children who have already been condemned to a blue colored death by their families? I can't say I discovered the answer to the more difficult of those questions. but I was instead reminded of the quiet delicacies that we are.

While sitting in mass, I watched as hundreds of people carefully shuffled through, speaking with their heads bowed toward one another in a silent respect to those awaiting communion. They would stop before each of Christ's stations in awe, light a candle and then grabbing for tangled coat sleeves, make their way out onto a congested 5th. 

The Priest all the while trying to deliver a sermon on the most profound theologists of our time. And while I admit that I myself was distracted by the splendor of the church and watching those non-practicers point out each architectural beauty, something caught me and I was pulled back in. While reading from the book of Peter, a story was delivered outlining the pursuit of a blind man who upon hearing Jesus pass through his village ask that he take pity and restore his sight. Something was said about how many times Jesus was asked, and how exactly, all there outlined carefully by Peter, but the point was this:

Without a perfect combination of faith and hope, the man wouldn't have been able to see again. 

Although I'm a highly spiritual woman, I haven't been a practicing Catholic in sometime if ever really. I don't attend mass regularly nor have I been to a proper confession since my first communion. But this struck me deeply. First because a man of faith wasn't putting all the glory of this supposed miracle on the shoulder of Jesus alone but instead gave some recognition to hope. It's undeniable that the old man had faith in Christ, but there also had to be a hope in humanity first before he could find the courage to call out to him as he passed by on his mule. Hope that the men whom he asked had told the truth, hope that Jesus would hear him as he shouted not once but three times into the crowd, hope that he would be chosen among all the sick and poor present.

This stuck with me, mulling the thought over carefully as I too pulled on my jacket, taking in the sweet smell of holy water as I braced for the wind coming in gusts now. I enjoyed myself in the park, walking off the path to hear the crunch of leaves beneath my boots. Allowing myself to get lost briefly before finding my way back by the sound of distant taxi horns. 

The Natural History Museum was packed as to be expected. I purchased my tickets, opting for a 3:00 planetarium show instead of the exhibit on bioluminescent creatures on the 4th floor. I meandered into the Asian persons wing and eventually down, through the North American creatures. Each stuffed thing a marvel  I wanted to press my face into the glass and let my eyes lose focus on the tufts of fur along the stomach of the Grizzlies. My phone alarm went off telling me the show was to start soon and I found my way to the planetarium, settling into somewhere among the 2nd row. 

I was exhausted by this point and happy to finally sit. I leaned back as the lights dimmed and the mother of pearl screen glowed bright with the skyline of New York. Journey to the Stars, my half-torn ticket stub read. It sounded interesting enough. I chuckled slightly as Whoopi Goldberg's voice boomed overhead, launching us from Earth into orbit among the Sun. 

Again, I was lost in the moment and tuned out our lively narrator, thinking of when I was 7 and announced to my parents over dinner that I was to become the greatest Astronomer who ever lived to what was asked, "why not become an Astronaut then?" (my reply? "It's too cold in space.") We swirled a moment, following the orbit tracks of each planet before shooting off to Orion's belt. I perked up again, interested to know what brought us here. 

I had known already that Orion's belt served as a nursery for new born stars. But how did the Universe begin at all? Enter mystical black matter and Hydrogen. As the Universe expanded and the first stars were formed growing too large to support themselves, they went off like ultra violent Super Novas, pushing their rejected existence into what would later become the many different solar systems, including the Milky Way. But without the first to come and the first to go, those other elements needed to create not only other stars and galaxies, but planets, especially those that can support life like ours or life itself, wouldn't have been possible.

So that's what it came down to. 

It's pretty easy to gather without the brilliance that is Whoopi Goldberg to know how rare we are in the grand scheme of things. That without the perfect amount of oxygen or our rotational placement among the other planets or that initial bang out in the middle of truly nothing, we wouldn't be here, throwing satellites back out into infinite darkness trying to find answers. And what did we discover? 

That we're made of stars. Those stars that started it all and died off left traces of themselves within us (about a teaspoon full) so that we could survive, reason, explore, grieve, hope and have faith. That we as individual and as a collective human race are made of stars. 

What a fucking phenomenal twist, isn't it? 

Gathering my belongings as the lights came on, drunk on the new knowledge gathered in those 30 minutes, I stumbled back to the North American hall and walked straight to the Grizzlies exhibit, pressed my face into the glass and let myself be lost in the brilliance of that fur because why not? 

Why not be in love with our faith and our hope and the stars that started it all? 

Iron and Wine - Boy With A Coin (OFFICIAL VIDEO)

So in love with this song and video for various reasons...

Solo

That cold has come again. The one from Prague that seems to have never really cleared up. I suspected it was here last week, but now I'm sure of it after having leaved over the sink for 10 minutes hacking away to remove whatever it is I can feel lurking in that pink fleshy void that link nose to throat. 

Whatever it is looks like lungs or brain. I'm sure it can't be good, but I have neither the time to take off work nor anything to keep a sample in until I can make it to the doctor aside from an old glass jam jar I washed out yesterday.

It hasn't stopped me entirely, this cold (if I can call it that). Although this is the time of year that I would start to burn out, and I am. Now the leisure of last minute planned activities will be replaced with more rigorous academic content. Play time, at least for us teachers, is over until after spring break in mid-April when at last we can pass comments over poorly brewed coffee in the staff lounge like

"the end is near!" and "we've almost done it, keep strong." 

I supposed part of me is excited for the change. With it comes centers meaning I'll get to take a step back and watch the kids blossom. We are here to make independent learners after all, right? It also means that winter months will soon fly by and those simple joys that came late to me last year will be soon upon us in 2013 - lest the world ends abruptly even before the new year.

I'm excited to see them plant seeds in our box if only to watch them peak outside the classroom door when they think I'm not paying attention in hopes of capturing any glimmer of movement beneath the soil. I'm excited for our "better" planned field trips to the Tech museum and, possibly, Academy of Sciences if Blythe can pull it off. We'll see. 

Soon. First we finish 2012, wrap up what lose ends we have going forward in the hopes we can blaze ahead lose ends free. Next Saturday I leave for New York to visit Jules, an impromptu trip I'm looking forward to very much. Any excuse to get out of Oakland and away for longer than an evening is much invited. 

I'm excited for snow. I'm excited for the time to read and write. I'm excited for good food. And, most importantly, I'm excited for the rest only a trip such as this can provide: no responsibilities, no demands, no schedule. Simply me and a brand new city.

Here's to the rest of this week....

When I grow up...

During Opening circle of class, I asked my students what they wanted to be when they grew up. After settling into our normal lopsided circle, I waited patiently for everyone to "think, think, think" about their answer before allowing each student to complete the sentence followed with a short explanation. 

Of course I expected the obvious: a princess, an astronaut, a race car driver. I smiled exuberantly with each response, coaxing a sentence more from each willing to produce it before moving on. After each had spoken, I stood and reached for the day's vocabulary before settling back into my spot on the rug when someone spoke up....

"But teacher, you never said what you wanted to be when you grow up."

In the moment I laughed and explained that I had already grown up and that I was a teacher. But looking back, maybe there was something to what was said. Something more than the pristine view of a six-year-old.

On the drive home I reflected on what I might have said. An astronomer, a volcanologist, a rescue diver...

Never a teacher.

Not that I should be ashamed to have become a teacher, I love what I do. I guess what hit me was more or less my inability to dream for the sake of dreaming. In some ways I haven't lost that talent totally, I don't think I would have come as far in running as I have if I didn't set some lofty goals. 

But those days of standing on the edge of consciousness while discovering a new planet, or fiddling with hot lava in some weird-o suit, or saving an entire crew from a capsized ship off the coast of Alaska are no more. I'm not sure if I could at that time realize those would never happen in this lifetime, but can I remember falling asleep to the idea of what I could do if given the chance. I was invincible! A beast among my wryly counterparts! 

A fearsome thing to behold behind my mane of tangled sun-bleached hair, face swept with the freckles of a thousand lazy summers spent in a tree. 

I was amazing.

So what happened? When did I lose enough faith in humanity to decide that it wasn't worth the hassle anymore, even if only for myself? 

Sitting in traffic, I wonder what I would have said if I had the chance to go back to that moment. 

Would I shout and stomp my feet and fight for the idea that we never grow up? Would I say a teacher, truly? Or would I say something more poignant? Something captivating? Something worthwhile? 

It seems I've forgotten what it means to live a life of any of those things for the time. But how I wish to practice anyhow.... 

Ray LaMontagne - For The Summer