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Xenology: Fireworks 08/05/2008
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Liz takes pictures of the explosions overhead, an activity I give up on quickly. It doesn't matter that my camera has a setting specifically for this purpose. How can shining blurs express motion? Even were I to take video, it would be nothing like seeing this live. You can tell me you know just what I am talking about, but I can never truly know that. A unique, unrepeatable, indescribable moment is lost forever every time we exhale.
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Xenology: To Write Love On Her Arms 08/01/2008
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I have known too many people -- mostly women but also several students of both genders -- who cut themselves. My school never seemed to know how to handle them -- usually by washing bloody items and ignoring it happened -- but I tried responding with compassion. They didn't need someone to judge them or use their self-injury as blackmail. What they are going through is beyond my ken, but not beyond my caring. So they would talk to me about it, how it externalized the pain they felt inside, ...
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Xenology: Left Behind 07/31/2008
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This rejection stings because I'd dared to invest myself in planning my new life. I hoped that three years of mixed teaching experience -- some of it quite trying -- along with a Master's in education meant some district would snap me up as soon as I walked through the door. I had triangulated the best place to live, a half hour drive from everyone and everything I loved, a home that would put me in the heart of an active village, walking distance to groceries and socializing. I would teach ...
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Xenology: Apoptosis 07/24/2008
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In this month and a half on my own, with no teaching to force my schedule nor anyone living with me whom could influence my day, I have witnessed aspects of my psyche eroding because they were not given anything else to do. I am not used to the concept of free time, so conditioned to bells ringing or my beeping PDA alerting me of an appointment or obligation. I could sleep all day, if I so chose. I could do nothing but read and eat pancakes. One day, I biked to Connecticut for the bragging ...
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Xenology: Sunshine and the Storm Cloud 06/23/2008
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When released into Daniel and Hannah's apartment (I collectively call them Hanniel, I invite you to join me) I study everything as though it were carefully chosen to display their personalities and histories. Hannah's room is the messier of the two, to my initial surprise. As Daniel is not yet home, I don't feel I have permission to trespass beyond the threshold, but peruse Hannah's living space like an anthropologist allowed access to a temple. Her walls are papered with outlines for her ...
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Xenology: Apologia Pro Amor Sua 07/22/2008
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I've been burned, I know that. I've been singed and scorched and flambéed. I've been deluded, but I'm not doing that. Melanie has given me reason and motivation to be more honest with myself and with you, my dear readers. I'm going to exploit that. As I said before and will say again, she has a bit of Gallic snobbery, raised by two college professors, and she's an only child. She's profound and precocious. She's still figuring out who she is, not that any of us should really stop. If ...
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Xenology: Fantasy and Reality 07/21/2008
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I assured her, as if the hug were not validation enough, that I remember her. Chrissy is the first girl I dated who emotionally engaged me between kisses. Prior to her, I'd dated a slow girl who went on to become a stripper and Chrissy's older sister Marie, who passed me off after a month to be with the boy who would later father her children. Inasmuch as a fifteen year old is capable of complex emotions, I had them for Chrissy. After four months, she dumped me for a drug dealer named Joe, ...
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Xenology: Take This Waltz 07/15/2008
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My wallowing is not so bad until the head waiter, seeing that I am sitting at a tiny table, nursing the diet soda I was fool enough to order before the bar opened, proclaims to everyone within earshot that I am alone and that they ought to take pity on me in about as many words. I stammer that I have friends, they just happened to be busy having just been married, and look down at the plastic sword that came with my latest meatball but quickly decide that it is a woefully inadequate weapon ...
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Xenology: Dissecting the Angel 07/10/2008
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Daniel lectured Hannah and me on concepts such as squaring the circle and trisecting angles, ideas just beyond my reach and interest. I try to pay attention and the basis behind what he was trying to do -- solve a series of math problems left by the ancient Greeks, who felt these acts could be done but didn't have the technically capacity -- truly appeals to me. I don't see why Daniel couldn't be the one to find these answers and I think it would be too easy to underestimate his capability, ...
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