fat fat fat
it is the end of the summer semester. students are letting it all hang out.
in the class that just ended, we received three boxes of pizza hut pan pizza after the final exam. the boys gobbled it up. one, the one who was nuts at the beginning of the semester, who changed, as if over night, from a muttering, anxiety-ridden over-talker into a really cool little personality, all in just ten weeks, he regressed a little bit and stuffed a whole piece of pizza into his mouth, then someone caught him with the crust hanging out, and everyone laughed. HIGHJINKS.
meanwhile, today, at the other location, the kid with ADD saw MFK’s quiz score, and blurted out, “oh, you’re the one who FAILED,” and my favorite kid said, sarcastically, “thanks ADDKid.” but then MFK waited all day to get back to the ADD…
as I have a tendency to do, i digressed from the lesson to briefly explain to the class that yesterday, when *someone had asked me what being in love was like (right?), and i had, somewhat idealistically, responded with only the good stuff, but that 90% of love is pain, etc. etc. that answer. then someone asked who asked that, and MFK, seizing the opportunity, gleefully said, “it was ADDKid!” (indeed, it had been).
then everyone started talking about puberty. and right when a member of the staff had entered the classroom, on one of their unknown assignments (they appear and disappear like glass), MFK asked me what it was like to go through puberty. which was awkward for everybody.
later, they told me they have to all go to the public schools’ PUBERTY NIGHT, and i thought my god i’m thirty-four, and that embarasses *me.
_________
many of the my female students have expressed a dissatisfaction with their bodies, which is laughable, because they are all Asian, and most are pin-thin. and it makes me think about how fat i feel am, and how selfish is that? … burgeoning eating disorders…and all i can do is watch…acutely aware of my own ugliness…my recent break-out…my *water retention…my short and damaged hair…my worn clothes…as if hoping to spare them the same fate, i told them they were all beautiful.
________
(also i have this theory that with eating disorders, interfering, except in extreme cases, worsens the problem).
_________
this weekend lo is coming to la, and we are going to play on saturdayyyy. it will be fun to have someone to tool around with. one of my friends told me i was hermiting, and he was right.
__________
great beauty in grammar exercises #12, and dreamscapes #495701h
Exercise 9: Using the Forms of Sit and Set
In each of the following sentences, write the correct form of sit or set on the line provided.
EX. Tim and I will both sit in the back seat.
1. Tim has set a pad of paper between us.
2. When I sat down, I felt a pencil on the seat.
3. We sat on the floor playing word games and talking about school.
4. Don’t set your lunch box on the window ledge, or your food will spoil.
5. When the car stopped, I set our picnic basket on the table.
6. Thi was reading about Lewis Carroll, but she set the book down.
7. We have sat here for an hour playing Mischmash, one of Carroll’s games.
8. I wrote the letters “HTH” on the page and then set the pencil besides me.
9. Thi sat for a long time, trying to think of a word containing that letter combination.
10. When we sat at lunch the next day, she whispered, “Lighthouse.”
_________________________________________________
it was a room full of x-rays of people who had gotten things stuck up their regions. a coke bottle. a light bulb.
then there were these two metal discs, dull grey, the size and shape of skittles, hanging from the ceiling by a bit of string. i had to do it, i was compelled. i freed the discs and lodged one up each nostril.
i wandered through the rest of the dream that way. up and down the halls of ucla, meeting the same people who inhabited my first round of grad school.
up and down the halls, they stood. leering. the perverted redhead, the judas(ette) advisor, the batshitcrazy girl with the tiny body and big round face and head. somehow, they had learned what i was going to do, and had beaten me to it. “but,” i said. “but, this was my idea…”
cut to
anger and tears about never being promised anything, piles of laundry, personal issues.
(hey, dirty laundry! i just got that!)
cut to
the end of the day, standing in front of the mirror, removing the metal discs from my nostrils. one of them would not come out, and then i was suddenly young again, and running to my father, tugging on his hand, asking for his help. he was young and handsome and strong, and his hair was still dark, and he was wearing a plaid button-down shirt. he spoke gently. he said not to worry. then we were in the bathroom. he removed the tweezers from the medicine cabinet, and told me to tilt back my head.
then i woke up.
_______________
RA NIGHTCLUB AT THE LUXOR, SUMMER, 2003
electric blue is all the rage,
the favorite season color of the rayon shirts worn
by men some years above the legal age
who dress alike and love their porn,
despite their second child having just been born.
electric blue is all the rage
in bottle labels and of nighttime passions scorned
and mocked by club girls who are disgusted
by these men years above the legal age,
whose personalities, in middle age, have been all but shorn,
and thus their mortal envelopes are steel-barred cages.
electric blue is all the rage
among the hopeless, but they have no one to warn
about the complicated maze of personality. rather, they are just a haze
of men well past their legal age.
but i barely make a living wage
and thus my habit has been born.
electric blue is all the rage
among the men above the legal age.
———————-
i am really dead and out of my head and thinking only, only, only of predicate nominatives, objective case pronouns, participial phrases, the difference between e.g., and i.e.
e.g. = for example
i.e. = that is
do you ever have moments of sudden literary understanding that only age can help you understand? e.g. yesterday, driving home from, the mountains loomed..their tops are beacons of wealth…who lives up there? where are the roads? how do they shop? what does it all look like? and i started to think of robert frosts’ “stopping by woods on a snowy evening,” and realized that like the woods, the mountains were lovely, dark and deep, but, like robert, i too had miles to go before i sleep, i.e. lots of work to do before i could take the time for the enjoyment of an unplanned drive through the mountains.
____________
yesterday i just ate and ate and ate and ate.
i also walked.
a lot.
forgot to put sunscreen on my face.
alas.
sowing the seed of another wrinkle.
the other day i told michael of the distress i feel upon my most recent case of self-actualization: i was too fat in my twenties. but now i look old.
haggard.
should just take the crone and own it?
(one of the reasons teaching is fun, i can BE THE SCHOOL MARM..I OWN IT)
but i have this other me.
the past six weeks of daily commutes have made this quite clear.
me there. me here.
)))))______0))))))))))))))))
but at what price..
__________________
i have this gift.
who knew? you know?
___________
but the gift
whinnies…
there’s another part
something more
exploratory
something
sexier.
it would be fine, to use this gift which requires
that one obtain a more stable life
one where idealism sovereigns
(but what does not change
is the will to change
in me, in me).
every year:
something new,
something different,
although the changes
are expensive.
and i’ll never know
stability, or a family;
except in objects, or in others
who, like me, document
our objects’ histories.
_______________
bernie mack and isaac hayes died.
isaac was supposed to headline this year’s sunset junction.
i was sad for both.
—————
and all of my students are watching the olympics in beijing
and i…i stuff my face. i used to swim. i used to have physical goals.
but somewhere, the journey and the goals switched places.
Palimpsest
Jared Carter
The walk that led out through the apple trees— the narrow, crumbling path of brick embossed among the clumps of grass, the scattered leaves— has vanished now. Each spring the peonies come back, to drape their heavy bolls across the walk that led out through the apple trees, as if to show the way—until the breeze dismantles them, and petals drift and toss among the clumps of grass. The scattered leaves half fill a plaited basket left to freeze and thaw, and gradually darken into moss. The walk that led out through the apple trees has disappeared—unless, down on your knees, searching beneath the vines that twist and cross among the clumps of grass, the scattered leaves— you scrape, and find—simplest of mysteries, forgotten all this time, but not quite lost— the walk that led out through the apple trees among the clumps of grass, the scattered leaves.
what to say
“i hear in my mind all of these voices
i hear in my mind all of these words
and it breaks my heart.”
note bene for august:
the comparisons/contrasts between intelligent, cruel societies and dumb, but gentle societies.
societies = people too
years ago i wrote a paper about the portrayal of mohawk society in st. isaac jogues’s captivity narrative, novum belgium 1646.
his description of the pain-trials he endured was so…empathetic. the cruel acts of the mohawk were depicted almost gently.
running the gauntlet
cutting off thumbs and fingers with clam shells (to increase pain)
a free-for-all town cut ‘em up fest
the ability to be cruel, in the mohawk society, was depicted as a mark of strength. (as a jesuit, perhaps jogues was sympathetic to this tendency in the mohawk. painful punishment. religion. the french language.)
despite the ease with which the collective was able to be cruel, their daily life was eden-like. men and women respected each other. families and friends worked together. even the captives, after their painful initiation, were taken in as family members. the initiation, it seemed, was enough to cleanse the foreigners of their past.
anyway i was thinking about that, and how a lot of my students talk about corporeal punishment in chinese schools (which is now technically illegal), and of the high level of academic achievement expected of students. and of the historically more gentle american schools, and the mediocre level of academic achievement expected as a result.
as a student, i would prefer the stricter paradigm because of the amount of attention each student must get. but as an adult, i prefer the more gentle. corporeal punishment and tight academic standards might occasionally be an effective tool for students’ and intellects and levels of self-control, and, as such, contributes to a more intelligent nation. but the emotional damage caused to the adult who inflicts the punishment is more dangerous to a nation still.
———–
the right eyelid
twitches
the webpages say
it is either stress or
too much light
or both.
last week, the pacific ocean stole my sunglasses
there i was, minding my own business
floating in the waves, happy and spitting salt water
holding my head above water, or
when a wave came
i would remember to hold onto the sunglasses
until this one
this one
of course
that WAVE
it spun me around twice or three times and i got a little scared and let go
of the sunglasses
and off they spun off off off into the ocean.
oh how i loved them. they were perscription
and old. since ‘01, they’ve graced my scattered visage.
and there are things that worry me:
the job, the loss of innocence, the upcoming
months, money, and the usual alienation.
————
this past weekend rachel and i drove out to a warehouse in Montebello and attended a blue jean sample sale. in this warehouse. tables and tables loaded with blue jeans in all sizes and styles. and hundreds of people, desperately searching. their choices hanging over their arms. children were set on the tables among the blue jeans. people threw caution to the wind and tried on the pants where they stood, hiking up their skirts. or they hid behind stacks of cardboard boxes, little paper dressing rooms.
we both got six pairs of 200+ blue jeans for 50 dollars. they were sweet dungarees too.
folks on the go
Text of a letter found in a book at the Goodwill in Los Feliz:
Dear Lorie & David,
Mom and I just had two of the best days of our trip, by experiencing a close-up viewing of Canyon DeChelly.
It all started when we left I-40 at Chandler and drove up US 191 to Chink, driving through the Navajo Reservation seeing Hogans and Indian people along the road.
We drove into the National Monument and secured a camp site in the NO FEE camp. We posted my sign “CAMP SPACE OCCUPIED” and after a bite of lunch we drove up Navajo 64 to Tsaik. Once there we drove into the Campus of the Tsaile Community College. The students were on spring break but the Gallery and Museum were open for viewing. A young woman in the fit shop area named “Tonya” spoke with us and answered questions about how the Navajo people go about establishing rights to use certain land on the Reservation.
Next we talked with Mr Harry Walters, a Navajo who is in charge of the museum. He showed us a painting of his that was on display for a staff and faculty art exhibit.
He also talked with us at length about how they are trying to keep the Navajo ways and language alive and a part of education of young people. Their courses not only offer English, Math, Biology, Psychology, Computers, word processing, but also Navajo rug weaving, man of southwest, Navajo-second language, Navajo Literature and grammar, Navajo culture. He also talked some of having some kind of teacher exchange with teachers of Colleges off the Reservation. He also went into a little of the way they incorporate Masculine and Feminine of the four directions ie: Male East, Female West, - Male North, Female South- Male sky, Female earth. And how everything rotates around the four directions and seasons.
On the way back to Chinle we stopped at overlooks on Del Muerto ie: massacre Cave and Mummy Cave, and Antelope House.
At the Thunderbird lodge, we purchased tickets for the morning half day Canyon tour, April 1. We were able to catch the first tour and our guide was “Johnny” the vehicle they used is a military surplus six wheel drive truck equipped with 24 comfortable seats on the truck bed.
The half day tour is the best in the morning because all the Ruins are facing South and get full sun this time of year in the AM. The tour is mostly in Del Muerto canyon. They were close up views of 1st Ruin, Ledge House, Antelope House. Near the end of the tour they go up Canyon DeChelly to the “White House” ruin for a close up and stop to look. The actual ruins are fenced off and persons are not allowed to walk through.
Our guide gave us informationm about probable dates of construction, subsequent occupations of different times and the resulting drawings and petroglyffs [sic].
He also told of how the Navajo fought and lost with the US Army in the canyon.
After we returned from the tour and had our lunch we drove south on US 191 to 264 and went east through GANDADO and ST> MICHAELS to Window Rock. We drove up near the Window Rock, then went on past the Navajo Nation Inn where you will stay and on down to Gallup where we checked into the KOA Kampground.
Again, I saw we had a great time experiencing the Canyon and gaining knowledge of the Navajo Nation.
I thank you for giving us the information about the College, etc.
Love,
Dad &Mom
