What Did T. Read in 2022?

 




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īkṣaṇa - Look

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A look back at something that haunts me. I've been living in denial about my immediate future. Rather than using the summer to prep for teaching 7th grade, I've been hoping that something else will open up last minute in, say, Greece, and I will be able to leave 7th grade 4,000 miles behind me and relocate to a place that has no 7th grade. Or that at least I'd be on Corfu teaching 7th grade. The curriculum where I'm supposed to teach is...confounding. I told Stella I don't know what I'm teaching. Since she works in Clayton and is the best teacher I know, I trusted her to tell me where to start and then kick my ass into gear. Stella opened her computer, spent 7 minutes examining the curriculum published for my district, then slammed the computer shut and said, "Yeah, good luck with that; that's a mess. Sorry, T." So I refuse to look. I refuse to check my school email. I refuse to set up my classroom. I refuse to remove "high school English...
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Hubris - Pride

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There's this story in the Bible where Elijah is the one, lone prophet of God who hasn't been executed... he's managed to escape this wicked king and queen who want to eradicate the old theology and make way for new gods. Elijah is like constantly on the lam and in hiding and like, "WHY AM I HERE!?!" But he has these moments of brilliance, when all his dilly-dallying and depression fall away and it's like he's imbued with power. One such moment is a showdown between the prophets of God (read: only Elijah. that's it) and the prophets of the false gods (estimated at 450 for Baal and 400 for Asherah). Picture such a thing! Lone Elijah facing down this horde of powerful prophets, with the king and all the people of the country on their side! But Elijah wins. The prophets of Baal and Asherah try to incite the power of their gods for hours, to absolutely no avail. Then Elijah's turn comes. He asks the God of the Israelites to prove to them that he exists,...
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Tips

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After traveling around a bit in the last decade, I have managed to come up with a few travel tips. These are mostly for me to remember, but maybe they'll help you, too :-) * Pack earplugs. For me, it's the slim-fit kind, otherwise my ear canals get crushed. These will save you on the plane and in hostels or bnb's within the city center, where it's loud. * Bring a backup charger. We got one for Christmas at Persimmon one year and it saved my life on this last trip! * Everything you need should fit into a carry-on. There is no reason to bring things like a hair dryer, a steamer, a curling iron, a bunch of jewelry, etc. That's crazy-talk. You are traveling to experience a new culture, not to bring your old culture with you!! It will be so much easier to get where you need to go if you're not lugging a bunch of crap all over the place. * You need no more than 3 pairs of shoes, so choose wisely. For 2 1/2 weeks in Europe, I took sneakers, flat sandals, and water shoe...
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Tīrtha - transition

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  My therapist says I am undergoing an existential crisis. Again. What a trope. I feel like a caricature of a human being. For weeks now, I have been trying to make sense of life and death. I've been thinking a lot about transitions lately. I hate instability. I hate change. I'd much rather be instantly transported from Point A to Point B than have to suffer through the uncertainty and instability of the in-between. I keep thinking about butterflies and what a short time they live. Did you know that those pretty yellow brimstone butterflies only live 2 days? What a fucking tragedy. As an English teacher, I feel like my mind only operates in themes, so I've chosen one pose a month as a yoga focus, and then every class is a variation on that theme. January was lunges. February was binds. March was Mermaid. April was figure 4's. May was core-focused. For June-July, we did splits.  And then came August. Like many of Life's lessons, I didn't know what I was writing o...
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Mudra (Sign/Seal)

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I had been hoping that if I failed to contact anyone from my new (middle) school, they would forget that they had hired me to teach there and just go on paying me without expecting me to show up. I think my years in Hazelwood set me up with false expectations about how payroll works.  Alas, I received a phone call (people still make such things!), asking which day I was available to come in. The woman whose room I'm moving into is just moving to the gym to be a PE teacher. She never introduced herself, just asked what I was doing there and why. Then told me I was doing it wrong. Not off to a great start. The man I report to has a beard that's half wavy, half straight, and exceedingly long. He's apparently quite brilliant but it's hard to tell because he constantly starts slow-moving sentences and then leaves them trailing off in the middle so he can start new ones. The entire time I was meeting with him, I kept envisioning myself grabbing the beard and whacking the whol...
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Anubhavābhāsa - Illusion

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Recently, Dr. B gave me a stern talking-to. He told me I need to drink less wine because it messes with my nervous system, which is already hyper-susceptible to anxiety and depression. He told me to try pot instead. "Never let it be said that Dr. B is a prude," said my Mr. Rogers-esque psychiatrist. Now that marijuana is legal, I should not have been afraid to visit a dispensary. However, my boss lost his job last year because of a compromising photo concerning him and a whole lotta buds, so I was not taking any chances. First, I asked Cara, who loves not only marijuana but all substances in general. She was busy with baseball games. Then I asked Georgia, who was way more of a badass than me in elementary school, and who must therefore, it should stand to reason, still be more of a badass and get me some drugs. She was busy with her flea-market business, though. On the plus side, she gave me this cool Babs record! Then I asked my sister Dragonfly, aka Lily, who dropped out of...
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Saurya - Courage

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I haven't been sleeping well lately. I've been so anxiety-ridden that I literally made a Google Doc to keep track of all of the things I am anxious about. This includes everything from remembering to get medicine for my altitude sickness, to needing to return luggage before its expiration date, to buying enough cat food, disposable litter boxes, and litter for Poppy while I'm gone. It's possible that my brain is seizing upon these fears because it cannot, it cannot  seize upon the bigger fears, like, "What if I get lost somewhere in Indonesia and literally cannot communicate with anyone?" I had my whole trip planned and then my friend Tiago blew it all to hell when he said, "If Tumpak Sewu has been on your bucket list for years, you can't get THAT CLOSE to it and not find a way to see it." It felt like Venice all over again, like something I would regret forever if I didn't at least try. So I threw my ENTIRE plan -- my pretty calendars and li...
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