Just to see if it is worth using. Right now, my technological gaze has locked onto tagging things. I have a heap of files in Box.net that scream out to be tagged. It's funny--I've known about tagging for years, but it never seemed useful for my aims. Now it seems central to my work and my writing. That's the way technology goes, though. There is only so much I can process at a time--or try out on my students. And of course, there's no point in using anything just to be using it.
1. We'll be away tomorrow, so there will be no time to blog my team.
2. Because Billie, who is the goddess of all things technological, wrote about Comic Life this week,
3. I bring you:
Thanks to Toonlet, not a moment is wasted.
1. Isn't it good to be home?
2. Why is Paul moving my Toyota out of the garage?
3. Why isn't he turning into the driveway?
4. Where is he?
5. How do I stop a moving car from twenty feet away?
6. Running in high-heeled mules slows a person down, doesn't it?
7. The forsythia bounce back from being run over, don't they?
8. Why did I wear an Eileen Fisher dress today?
9. Is that a telephone pole or a tree?
10. How's the bumper?
11. Where's the cat?
12. Guess who's getting a new car this year?
May has been the hardest month of the year for me, but I am finding much of that dissipating. Turing 50 has been liberating that way, even as it has been showing me that my life is not infinite. Is that the way it goes, though? One hand metes out structure and the other, freedom.
Probably the best change has been my ability to say "I don't care," and mean it. I am finding it easier and easier to let go of the trivial because I can see how much of it gets in the way of what's important to me. And so many things that were so important in the past, like being right, like feeling vindicated, like being the smartest person in class--these all seem so juvenile and silly at this stage of my life. I've got my marriage, my family, my writing projects and my teaching, and of course my friends, online and off, and that seems like enough for me.
I've been able to return to my habit of meditation and prayer on a much more regular basis. While I will forever question the nature of God, I am fairly certain that God exists and has been a presence in my life. Group worship has not been my strength, and I don't know if it would have been different had I been raised an Episcopalian like my mother rather than a Catholic like Dad. Being a loner by nature, I guess that regardless of the group, I would have strayed. Buddhism has had a major effect on my life, giving me strength to let go of things and situations that don't work, and a peaceful simplicity to return to--that life is suffering, that our perceptions are not reality, and , well, a sense of confidence that comes from letting go of so much.
In a way, I've stopped getting on my nerves. The habit of asking myself why I'm feeling competitive, angry, wound up, blue, mean or whatever seems to be far more reflexive than it was even ten years ago. And figuring out where those feelings came from and letting it go happens so much more quickly now. This isn't to say that I don't deal with things anymore, but that don't react to every single thing that comes up with an equal dose of intensity.
And to say that I don't care frees me to say that I do care about certain things in life and that I do want my energy and money to move towards projects that I value, like my writing, and projects that I value because they value others, like finding charities whose monies go straight to the persons needing it.
This weekend we entertained my brother, my sister-in-law (both doctors) and their kid (both kids). Amidst the pizza, the cat hunts and the stacks of family photos, the conversation drifted towards work (mine) and credentials (for community college teaching). The MFA, I explained, is considered a terminal degree. They burst out laughing. "A terminal degree? That doesn't sound so good!" And I guess in their field, it isn't.
More importantly, no cats were blogged on Friday because they had taken to the bowels of the basement, hiding from company. I can't blog that which I cannot see. Or something like that.
Back to paper grading.
Anyone who has taught for more than five years can appreciate how, while going through my blogger account, I was amazed to find that two of my former high school students, John and Viv, have had a baby ( who has a blog!!) !! I shouldn't be that surprised--after all, I went to their wedding!
Today would have been my mother's eighty-third birthday. The further I get from the age she was when she died, the easier it is view her as another person with flaws and strengths and not like a person who was only sick, tired and uncomfortable. I respect her attempts to get up and do the daily tasks of everyday life, even when she could barely breath. I respect her for trying to keep things normal for us for as long as she could. I respect her intelligence and her wit. I respect her sense of adventure. I respect her skill as a writer. I respect her for assuming that I would go to college and for her insisting that I not have children or a marriage until I was thirty so that I could have adventures of my own.
The title of this post is from a poem by Milne, whose four children's books taught me so much about life.
I met a man online who changed my life. And we're still together. What was it that cummings wrote about being grateful that someone gave him a daisy? I'm grateful for nine years of daisies, laughter and love.
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