I feels so strange that I’ve been gone for less than two weeks
when it feels like months. The days have been long and challenging, both for
the volume of information we are trying to absorb and the emotional challenges
of witnessing the structural racism and classism that plagues education.
After five days of regional induction in Baton Rouge (more
on that later), we drove to Mississippi for the official five-week training
program, where we will earn a teaching certificate that qualifies us to teach
for one year. We will have online classes throughout our first full year of
teaching to reach a higher level of certification by next summer.
We are staying in the dorms at Delta State University (home
of the Fighting Okra) in Cleveland, Mississippi, which is a big deal because it
has a Walmart. The nearest movie theater is 45 minutes away, and the nearest
Starbucks is an hour and 45 minutes away, but with 12,000 people it’s the
largest town for 60 miles in any direction. The locals are very familiar with Teach for
America, and it seems the presence of the corps provides an economic boom every
summer when the college students depart. The coffee shop I’m sitting in right
now has a “Peach for America” drink, and another local bar sells “Drink for
America” T-shirts…
The first week of training was an intensive crash course in
lesson planning, classroom and behavior management, and social justice issues
as they pertain to educational inequities. We learned that it took a long time
after the passage of Brown v. Board of Education for Mississippi to actually
take the integration of schools seriously. The backlash to this was the
creation of all-white private schools that denied acceptance to black students
on the basis that they were “unqualified”. The principle of school choice was
used to defend these schools, even though many of them were unaccredited and
even failing. I felt sick to my stomach when I realized that meant that parents
would send their students to failing schools where they would graduate with a
GED instead of a high school diploma rather than send them to school with black
kids. The most infuriating part was that many of these schools still exists in
the south.
On Thursday and Friday we visited the schools that we will
be teaching at starting on Monday. Teach for America has partnered with local
schools to provide summer programming that would otherwise be non-existent, though
it is simultaneously a four-week training program for the teachers. (It’s kind
of like how beauty schools do free haircuts and massages so that their students
can get practical experience—the quality isn’t guaranteed, but it’s free.) Each
classroom has three or four TFA teachers who trade off teaching different
subjects. I’ll be teaching math as my primary subject, and literacy in small
group rotations in a 2nd grade classroom.
The school I will be teaching at is in Ruleville, Sunflower
Country (population 2,800). In the hallways hang progress reports from prior
years, which are mostly red, indicating “F” status on the national exam that
measures Common Core standards (PARCC). The proficiency levels range from
15-40% across every subject and grade. My stomach dropped when I flipped the
numbers in my head. 80% of third graders were failing in reading. 85% of sixth
graders were failing science. One rare chunk of orange showed that 45% of
fourth graders were proficient or above in math. I questioned the rational of
displaying such depressing news so prominently. Just a reminder, you’re failing.
But compared to the rest of the town, the school seems the
most joyful. The classrooms are colorful, with alphabet rugs and encouragements
voiced by animated paper stars. You can
do it! Keep up the great work! There is a sense of resilience in the
administrators we have talked to throughout training. They know what their kids
are up against, but they haven’t lost hope.
The surrounding streets are a different story. Everything
feels slow and sprawling, with wide spreads of unkempt crab grass separating single
story houses from trailer homes from lots with rusted tin sheds and farming
equipment. The houses here are tired. They seem to sag into their frames,
surrendering to the tendrils that creep and wind up the cracked and peeling
paint. The mosquitoes and the weeds seem
to be the authority around these parts.
The one clear point of pride in the town is that it is the
birth place of Fannie Lou Hamer, a Black sharecropper and civil rights activist
who fought alongside Martin Luther King for voting rights for Black folks in
the South. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Lou_Hamer)
You may have heard her famous quote “I’m sick and tired of being sick and
tired.”
There is a monument garden around her burial site that is
well-tended. When we passed by in the school bus that takes us to the site
every morning there were several locals gathered with flowers at her headstone,
paying their respects. One of our coaches said it best: “before you feel sorry for
these kids, remember that they have the blood of Fannie Lou Hamer in their
veins. Fear them. Respect them. Their ancestors led the civil rights movement.”
I am excited to start teaching, but also overwhelmed with
the amount of information We've been given in the last 10 days about how to
teach. I never fully realized how much goes into the process of running a
classroom until we did our lesson plans for teaching single digit addition,
which were around four pages long. Everything you say and do as a teacher
should be intentional and rehearsed—the way you give directions, your body
language, the way you give praise and consequences. To be honest, I’ve never
been more anxious about standing in front of a room full of 7-year-olds. I
worry that I will get so caught up in getting the processes and procedures
right that I forget why I’m really there—to love them.
To end with a fun fact, I learned recently that teachers
drink more than any other profession, and kindergarten teachers drink more than
any other grade. After the past ten days, I’m not surprised.
In light of the interest folks have shown in my recent move
to Louisiana to serve with Teach for America, I’ve decided to revive my old
travel blog. The name Wanderhaus only implies adventure, and I decided that
need not be limited to international wanderings.
To answer a few FAQs:
What is Teach for
America?
In a nutshell, kind of like a domestic PeaceCorp for
teachers. It’s a nonprofit that sends fresh college grads (and some middle age
career changers) who are passionate about educational equity to areas of the
country that have been identified as really struggling to provide quality education
for all of their students. These students attend schools in neighborhoods where
funding has been lost as richer students move to nicer areas, where structural
racism and poverty put downward pressure on economic mobility and where it is
difficult to recruit highly qualified teachers due to these problems. These
areas have high teacher turnover rates and many students are stuck with long
term substitutes when teachers bail after just a few months.
The program has been controversial over the years for a
number of reasons (mainly putting non-education majors into the classroom after
only 6 weeks of intensive training), but they have made significant
improvements in the last decade, and on TFA teachers perform on average as good
or better than first year teachers who have taken a traditional route into
education.
I had heard of Teach for America throughout college because
they recruit on DU’s campus, but I had always been skeptically due to the
criticisms I had heard. My area of expertise has become leadership and
character development throughout my time with a number of youth programs, but I
didn’t realize there was room for that kind of instruction after having coffee
with a TFA recruiter who had been given my name by one of my Leadership
professors. I’ve realized from conversations with other teachers that SEL
(social emotional learning) is a hot topic in education right now, but one that
few schools really know how to teach well since you can’t teach empathy the
same way you teach math. From my thesis research I discovered that social
emotional skills aren’t just a warm-and-fuzzy, feel good concept—they actually
impact student success in very tangible ways, from academics and school
completion to prison incarceration and teenage pregnancy rates. It’s the
non-academic side of education that is so often ignored, but I want to develop
this as an area of expertise and see how it can be used to help at-risk kids
succeed inside and outside of the classroom.
Did you get to pick
Louisiana?
Yes! I was part of a pilot program where I got to choose
between 5 regions that I identified as good fits for my interests and needs,
and I picked Southern Louisiana due to the strong presence of charter schools
(where there is generally more room for experimental practices and social
emotional development) and the strong and colorful culture of the region. Also, Colorado's stark lack of diversity (at least in the communities I've worked in) isn't conducive to an environment where I can grow in awareness about structural racism and my own identity. As I put it to one friend, there's only so much you can learn from people who are just like you. I picked the South because I knew it would challenge me. I don't expect this to be an easy experience, but I do expect it to make me grow in ways I can't yet imagine.
How long will you be there?
I’ve signed on to a two year commitment, but if I were to choose
to stay for three I could do a free master’s program at Louisiana State
University in any subject. I’ve also been told that Louisiana has a high number
of TFA alum in the area because so many people fall in love and never leave. We’ll
see…
Most people don't believe me when I tell them that the most life changing class I've taken in college has been creative writing. It has nothing to do with my major or minors, but it taught me an incredibly important lesson about life, something I doubt our professor even intended. The professor was a grad student named Serena who I'm fairly sure resented having to teach undergraduate classes as she constantly reminded us that one could not be taught how to be a good writer.
Instead she focused what little classroom structure we had on teaching us how to be creative, a process which usually consisted of "games" where we came up with random words and had to combine them into phrases with our neighbors, or deleted every third, fifth and sixth word in a line of text, or had to close our eyes and pick two words on a page and use them in the same sentence.... you get the idea.
The idea was that the best creative writing doesn't occur when you decide on the meaning and describe it in words, rather when you randomize words and derive meaning from chance encounters.
Of course none of our phrases made any sense (clearly we were amateurs), and being a highly logical thinker it drove me absolutely nuts. My professor would read aloud from books of her favorite poets, which usually sounded something like this:
Kiss my lips. She did. Kiss my lips again she did. Kiss my lips over and over and over again she did. I have feathers. Gentle fishes. Do you think about apricots. We find them very beautiful. It is not alone their color it is their seeds that charm us. We find it a change. Lifting belly is so strange. I came to speak about it. Selected raisins well their grapes grapes are good. Change your name. Question and garden. It's raining. Don't speak about it. My baby is a dumpling. I want to tell her something. Wax candles. We have bought a great many wax candles. Some are decorated. They have not been lighted. I do not mention roses. Exactly. Actually. Question and butter. I find the butter very good.
excerpt from Gertrude Stein's"Lifting Belly"
(Apparently this was a poem about pregnancy, though I'm still convinced the author had just overindulged, an interpretation that seemed to offend Serena for some reason.)
The class went on in that way for 10 weeks, and at the end everyone who had showed up got As and we went our separate ways. It wasn't until a few months had passed that I realized just how valuable the concept of "random" could be in life.
It hit me as I was trying to figure out a way to justify the work I've been doing at a youth leadership camp. My mother had asked me what it had to do with anything else I wanted to do with my life, and I had to think about it.
The truth is I've done a lot of things that haven't had anything to do with anything else in my life. I decided to spend a year in Germany in high school even though I didn't speak any German. I started studying Japanese at the beginning of last year though I have no connections to the country, have never been into anime and (wait for it) don't even like sushi. I design runway fashion out of trash for an environmental advocacy group in California, spent one Christmas break working as a Christmas angel, write for my school's business newspaper even though I'm not studying business, and dedicate a week every summer to working at a camp when I could be in DC doing fancy internships that I'm sure would look much more impressive on a resume.
But somehow, I find connections in the randomness that are astounding. I learned that my last name is actually a city in Germany, and that our last record from our ancestors was from a city just 60km away. I found out that my personality is much better suited to German culture than American, and fell in love with German sustainability, which turned into me making a traditional German dress out of German candy wrappers for a trash fashion show. After beginning Japanese I realized that Germany and Japan have a TON in common because of their World War Two histories, both going from shambles in the 40s to the third and fourth largest economies in the world today (I'm an econ minor). There are even types of traditional Christmas cake (which I learned about during my Christmas angel days) that are only made in Germany and Japan.
And when I randomly took a business class I learned that everything we teach at the leadership camp (teamwork, communication, empathy, integrity) are skills that are in high demand in business and for hiring in general. There's even a word for them ("soft skills") and I'm now writing my thesis on the importance of soft skill development to the economy, and my University in Germany I'll be at for study abroad has a research center for skill development. Somehow now I have the idea of combining my passion for education and soft skills with economics and international development by studying the economics of education in grad school. (One of three programs for this in the world is in London, where I've wanted to study since I was a kid)
My felt completely random until l I stopped compartmentalizing all of my hobbies and interests and passions and realized that the greatest meaning is derived from these "chance encounters." I figured out what I want to do with my life (maybe) because I just kept doing what I loved, even though it didn't fit into any sort of plan at the time. Now eventually, I'm figuring out a way to combine them into something I never would have arrived at by conventional methods.
But that's the thing about life-- you can't make a plan and fill it with all of the things that will take you from A to Z. If you do you put on blinders to all of the seemingly random opportunities that might end up making the most meaningful connections.
We are surrounded with a mentality of delayed gratification. That is, if you want to be a successful lawyer/doctor/researcher/business person or doctor or whatever it is, you have to fit in all of the classes and internships and practicums required, even if some of it is horrible. We take a huge gamble based on the promise of grandiose titles and salaries-- who knows at the age of 18 whether or not they would truly be happy as a surgeon? It is physically impossible, yet that is what college kids everywhere are expected to predict. You can never choose a major without at some point being asked "so what do you want to do with that?" Can't it just be enough that I enjoy studying international relations and economics to justify studying those things? With some majors it's easy to say what you'll do, because there is a well know position associated with it, like psychologist, doctor, artist, etc. But there are so many more things you can do with your life than be one of the ten cookie cutter jobs that we teach little kids with picture books. The thing is-- you just haven't heard of it yet.
In economics this is referred to as imperfect information. When we don't have all of the information, we are more likely to make irrational decisions, like thinking we have to choose one interest out of dozens and forget about all the rest, or leave them to gather dust on the shelf and be pulled out years later with the guilt and regret of abandoned dreams. We grow up thinking it's a zero sum game. You can be an artist OR a scientist. A doctor OR a teacher. We don't think of careers that might combine all of our talents, passions and interests because there are just too many jobs out there to learn about up front.
But here's the great irony: if we know that there are so many jobs out there we've never heard of, and in all likely hood something that combines everything we love-- why are we content to stick with one cookie cutter option, and leave the rest as tangential interests or hobbies? What is the real harm in saying "I have no effing clue" the next time someone asks you what you want to do with your major? Feeling judged for not having your life figured out at the age of 18?
Because life isn't a straight line, it's a game of connect the dots, where all of the dots are the things you love and the lines are the chance encounters and relationships that tie them all together.
Of course, some things are mutually exclusive. You can't become an astronaut/princess/ballerina/veteranarian/kindergarten teacher (sorry 5 year olds), and some things might have to be kept as hobbies or extra reading. But if you give these things up to make room for "necessary" things you don't enjoy, you miss out on the opportunity to see the crazy ways those "random" dots might tie into your life.
3. Being able to drive where ever I want (while only feeling mildly guilty)
4. Bagels
5. Mexican food
6. Veggie Straws
7. Pirate's booty (If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't ask)
8. My dogs.
Things I'm looking forward to
1. BEING RID OF SILLY AMERICAN DRINKING LAWS
I just want a glass of wine with dinner, for Pete's sake. Also, I'll be 21 by the time I return, which means I never have to deal with prude American laws again. And my inner beer snob will finally have cheap options other than PBR and Coors Light.
2. Ubiquitous composting
Because ever since I got back from Germany I feel like a terrible human being whenever I have to throw compostables in the trash. They trained me well.
3. Nutella for days
4. The best flippin bread in the world
(though I suppose that might be pancakes... or naan? Do they flip naan?)
Germans really should be known for their bread. People train for years to become bakers, and it's a well-respected craft.
5. Doener Kebab
It's kinda like Gyros, but way better. On my last day with my host family we got Doener from a local vendor and had a picnic by the creek. (I'm not one for extravagant affairs. On my last night with my real family we had tacos and I was happy as a clam) (Except for the ones that end up in chowder).
6. German (read: Italian) ice cream
The wealth of Italian immigrants in Germany means you can get a cone of gelato for a Euro pretty much wherever you go.
7. Trains
There are few things more peaceful than riding a train through the German country side. And the route from Heidelberg to my old host family's house goes straight through the black forest.... And they're always on time *cough* Amtrak
Observation: Most of the things on these lists are food. Good thing I don't have enough money to buy much of it or I'd have to worry about the "exchange student 15" again...
Drafted this a few years ago. Not finished or perfect, but worth sharing. 1. On Success
To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2. A woman sat on her porch one summer evening and talked with her prized possession – a worldrenowned racing greyhound named Cash. When he raced, Cash ran with all his might and won and won and won. After each victory, his owner happily deposited the large paychecks into her retirement fund. The two often spent hours on the porch recounting these victories and pondering future races. This evening was different, however. After decades of success and millions of dollars in winnings, the greyhound told his owner that he was hanging it up. Cash had run his final race. Upon hearing the news, the shocked owner asked: “Just be honest. Are you getting too old to keep up this pace?” Cash answered, “No, no, I still have a lot of race left in me.” Moving on, the owner pried, “So, are you injured?” “No.” Cash replied, “Actually, I’ve never felt better!” “Well,” inquired the woman, becoming increasingly frustrated, “do I mistreat you in any way?” “Come on,” came the response, “you know you always treat me kindly.” “Then why? Why won’t you race? I must know. You are so good at what you do and you’ve worked for years to get to this point – the pinnacle of your career. If you retire, we will miss out on even larger paydays, worldwide fame and a chance to go down as the most successful owner-greyhound combo in history!” To that Cash replied: “I don't want to race anymore because after all those years of running and running and running, I finally discovered that the rabbits I have been chasing all my life aren’t even real.” -Corey Ciocetti, from Chasing Real Rabbits 2. On attitude
One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference. - Robert Fulgham, Everything I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten 3. On Tact Tact is the art of making point without making an enemy" - Isaac Newton 4. On fellowship with humanity
Wisdom from Doctor Who
The Doctor: [Pointing to frozen Abigail Pettigrew] Who's she?
The Doctor: Nobody important? Blimey, that's amazing. You know that in nine hundred years of time and space and I've never met anybody who wasn't important before.
On grudges
The Carrot, the Egg, and the Coffee Bean
A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her.
She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved, a new one arose.
Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to boil. In the first she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil, without saying a word.
In about twenty minutes, she turned off the burners. She fished out the carrots and placed them in a bowl. She pulled out the eggs and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled out the coffee and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her daughter, she asked, “Tell me what you see.”
“Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” she replied.
Her mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. The mother then asked the daughter to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg.
Finally, the mother asked the daughter to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its richness and savored its aroma. The daughter then asked, “What does it mean, mother?”
Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity — boiling water. Each reacted differently.
The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak.
The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened.
The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.
“Which are you?” she asked her daughter. “When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?”
Think of this: Which am I? Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength?
Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff? Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and hardened heart?
Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst; you become even better and change the situation around you.
When the hour is the darkest and trials are their greatest, do you elevate yourself to another level?
How do you handle adversity? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?
The happiest of people don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the best of things that come their way.
On Humility
"My list of virtues contain'd at first but twelve; but a Quaker friend having kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my pride show'd itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any point, but was overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinc'd me by mentioning several instances; I determined endeavouring to cure myself, if I could, of this vice or folly among the rest, and I added Humility to my list, giving an extensive meaning to the word.
I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the appearance of it. I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbid myself, agreeably to the old laws of our Junto, the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix'd opinion, such as certainly, undoubtedly, etc., and I adopted, instead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be so or so; or it so appears to me at present. When another asserted something that I thought an error, I deny'd myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear'd or seem'd to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos'd my opinions procur'd them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevail'd with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.
And this mode, which I at first put on with some violence to natural inclination, became at length so easy, and so habitual to me, that perhaps for these fifty years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape me. And to this habit (after my character of integrity) I think it principally owing that I had early so much weight with my fellow-citizens when I proposed new institutions, or alterations in the old, and so much influence in public councils when I became a member; for I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and yet I generally carried my points."
Benjamin Franklin, in
On Joy and Sorrow
Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow." And he answered: Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
On Pain
And a woman spoke, saying, "Tell us of Pain." And he said: Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields. And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
On Giving
Then said a rich man, "Speak to us of Giving." And he answered: You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow? And what is fear of need but need itself? Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, thirst that is unquenchable? There are those who give little of the much which they have - and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome. And there are those who have little and give it all. These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty. There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward. And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism. And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space. It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding; And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving And is there aught you would withhold? All you have shall some day be given; Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors'.
On Love
Then said Almitra, "Speak to us of Love." And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said: When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Synergy is when the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts, when 2+2 miraculously equals 5. In love and friendship, look for people who love you as you are, but make you a better version of yourself.
"If you ever choose to pursue something where the odds of your success are low, people will always tell you to have a safety net. "Study art, but double major in business, just in case" they'll say. Of course this advice is always well-intended, but the problem with having a safety net is that if it's there, you will always use it. Without a safety net, you're going to get really damn good at walking on that tight rope."
(Not sure of the original source or wording of this, but thank you to Jim Halderman for sharing it)
Some nonsense poetry.
(Serena loved it; I got an A)
There are holes at the
ends of my finger tips
where the universe
escapes
and pinprick lights
appear
in periwinkle dawn,
sparrows sing
in open awe
of calloused palms
and desert patterned
snowflakes
float in ripples over
sand
breathing shallow
vapors
cadenced gases
morphine wine
in picket fences
blended
subtle casualties of
crime
If hollowed cheeks and
rosy tongues could speak
they'd drown the books
in rivers
and the window to my
heaven would
collapse in
faded
time
Needles
If there were a
god in Amsterdam
I would live in salt
or something
I gave up French like
you gave up opium
except
you didn't
menteur
There's an empty
bottle in the riptide
or
was it full?
sorry
You let the bonsai
tree die.
that's grounds for divorce
right?
How can you fit so
much sleep in your mouth
I'm drowning in a sea of
stars
Fuck
January is suffocating
your lungs must be made of piano strings
I'm sick of
Tchaikovsky.
And some form poetry,
because apparently I've got a knack for rhythym. (I wasn’t allowed to
write this until week 7… apparently it’s "juvenile" in the art world...)
