missing, mixed up, and meandering

Thank you to everyone who sent good wishes to my missing students in Gaza. I hope it's just that they're goofing off. Also, can you imagine signing up for something like "Literature Survey 2: Romanticism to Post-Modernism," while being bombed and displaced? (I can't.)

I've been thinking about them all day and then those thoughts get mixed up with how much I love my human kids and my canine kids (I don't think I'll ever recover from losing Scout). And then about how when the kids were younger they'd get jealous because they could tell I loved my students. It's no secret that students matter a great deal to me and for the time they are in my care, I love them dearly and consider it an honor when I get to continue to be in their lives as a mentor and get to see their new jobs, and weddings and kids and reinventions. Someday, I'll be like Mr. Chips, my kids just lists of all the young people who have meant so much to me.

(And lately, as I get older, I feel waves of affection for young people in general. Babies and toddlers and little kids and tweens and teens obviously. But also random young people. Like the other day, I passed these two young women with their bags of Trader Joe's groceries and two-buck Chucks under their arms and just... I don't know... could see the evening they'd planned for themselves and was just overcome and hoped they'd have the best time.)

This is why I can't understand how we're going about our lives while children are being killed in the most gruesome ways. When there is so much visual evidence of it happening every day. 

Apparently, there's a video on the news now showing children being burned alive in a hospital. Children. Being burned. While alive. In a hospital. Every detail is a new level of hell. 

A whole year ago, I was horrified and the horrors have just kept multiplying and spreading. At the time, I quoted James Baldwin, "The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this is incapable of morality." And I love the strength and conviction of Baldwin's statement and simultaneously feel so helpless about getting my government (that could end this horror with a single phone call) to acknowledge it. I feel like a character from The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas protecting sanity and the status quo.

(In the meantime, I better go to bed, so I can do ok for my students who can show up. One of them wrote last week, "This class is my all-time favorite class if I could take this class over and over again I would. Everyday is a favorite moment." [unedited] I mean it sounds a bit Groundhog Day, but little did they know when they wrote that, that it would give me a reason to show up this week.)

entering the scene

still all these years later 

and probably always 

I will know how 

                     even in fall's dull decay 

                     even as I am emptied

                     how rich the world

how it reads many books all 

at once even as I strive

to get through one

                     I wish I didn't lose plots

                     as if I had holes in my 

                     hands and my head

I've even lost the character 

I used to be--who waits

for me to return

                     all her soul's myriad lights 

                     merely dormant mirrors

                     for right now  

________________

Note: I'm trying to escape. I'm playing word games in word worlds because things in the world are too horrific. Another refugee camp (Jabalia) and another hospital (Al Aqsa) were bombed today. The eleven students from Gaza who had signed up for the online course, "Literature Survey 2: Romanticism to Post-Modernism," neither showed up to our weekly class meeting nor responded to the class materials. If this were a regular class, I'd be worried things weren't going well, but in this extraordinary circumstance, I'm so worried something has happened to all my students.

Pic: Autumn colors and orange koi who came up to say hello. (Radiology Gardens; from a walk with LB. Big A and I took a walk right after this one. We got rained on, but stubbornly persisted for a full Super Sparty loop.) 

just look up

I'm not alarmed 

by the new 
today

                       forever is now

                       remembering  

                       is yesterday

cues alighting

on  our  lips

and eyelids

                       speak warnings/

                       seek welcome

                       like this

_____

Pic: I did it! Last month, I hoped to get a picture of geese heading out in a "V" and seem to have managed it. (Not perfectly, but I'm counting it.)

 

A beast and some beauty

It was a beast of a day. The college board has decided that with declining numbers they'll need to cut 33 full-time positions to stay fiscally viable. The sense of panic and grief was constant at today's faculty meeting and at most of the meetings leading into it. Tears, gallows humor, anger... I saw it all. 

On top of the lowgrade panic of the election, this job uncertainty feels almost unbearable. The plan is to announce the cuts by December 15th, which is apparently the deadline the AAUP suggests so people can begin to look for jobs for the next academic year. (But also, with the state of higher ed, what jobs?) 

The two bright spots at work were completing some more paperwork for the prison class (I always procrastinate on paperwork) and a mood-uplifting meeting with my student, faculty, and staff sisters on the Women's Board.

At home, it was Nu's actual birthday, and they seem kind of lit up from within. Heart eyes. 

Pic: The evening sky on my way home from work. The wind turbines and the cornfields make this so innately mid-Michgan. (I cropped out most of the car--I know, I know, I shouldn't be taking pictures--it was just so pretty though.)

going on 17

Nu turns 17 tomorrow and they have plans with friends, so we had our family celebration today with pizza, cake, and presents. Nu rarely wants things, so we collaborated on a list of 70 songs about 17-year-olds that they loved. Steph, did something like this for North, I think? We weeded out the more letchy ones (there are so many songs about adult men checking out 17-year-old girls!) and tried to find songs that described being 17. The top ones: "Seventeen without a purpose or direction, we don't owe anyone a fucking explanation" (The Rock Show, Blink-182); "You won't be seventeen forever and we can get away with this tonight" (Seventeen Forever, Metro Station); "Pack me up and put me in a time machine, so I can remember when we were seventeen" (Seventeen, Four Year Strong). There are so many songs about being 17, and Nu thinks it has something to do with the number of syllables in "seventeen," rather than the age itself. Also: The grandparents sent gift cards and cash, this Pack Rat puppet who carries a knapsack might be their new purse, they have a new speaker for their room, and a snack box from Japan. 

Big A is working tonight, so he headed to bed after dinner while the kids and I headed out to see The Substance. It was a bit heavy-handed and the body horror was extreme enough to make me want to retch--but the kids thought it was all hilarious. What on earth have I wrought?! 

After we dropped At off, Nu started to play Imogen Heap on the car stereo. I don't even know how Nu found this music that's now nearly 20 years old... I internally debated whether I should tell them that I had always thought of "Goodnight and Go" as my song for A (not the stalker-y bits, but the "must you make me laugh so much" section and also the oops missed the train home part). I ended up telling them, and then they earnestly asked me if I would be okay "sharing" the song with them. I guess the kids are alright after all. 

(Whom am I kidding? I love my little humans to bits... I can't believe this may be Nu's last birthday at home.)

Pic: Nu's delicious (pumpkin cheese)cake looks like it has a hundred candles because there are candles spelling out "Happy Birthday" in addition to their 17 candles.

coming back around

Friends and family in the path of Hurricane Milton are beginning to "mark" themselves safe; I hope that continues. For right now, it feels lovely to be back home where everything is normal and human-sized (as opposed to thousands of feet tall or deep à la Arches and Canyonlands). 

And on my first full day back, these four beautiful encounters felt like blessings.

1) When I went to pick up the holy basil (Tulsi) plant from the people selling it, they turned out to be a South Indian mother-daughter pair who were so, so nice. The daughter was relocating to the U.K. and when I told them that I had done my doctorate in the U.K., she turned out to be an Oxford Alumna too. At that point, they--naturally--invited me to come in and have "coffee and tiffin." 

2) Although it was mostly an intro to their online tech and learning platform (Moodle), there was a sense of solidarity at the Zoom meeting for the volunteer Gaza instructors. (The initiative is led by Lille University in France and hosted by AnNajah University in Palestine.) I gulped when the admin said it would be good to record lectures because students may not have internet access or electricity at class meeting times. Most of the other instructors were men, so when I spotted someone who appeared to be a woman, I Facebook-friended them like it was 2006. Then KK and I had a heartfelt exchange about why we were doing this and swore comradeship. 

3) Finally, and for no reason I can think of, my masseuse AM decided to gift me today's massage. First I demurred, then I refused outright... but she shut me down by saying she knew I would respect her decision. This feels too, too much--massaging is strenuous work and a whole hour out of her workday is too generous. When I asked her, she merely smiled and said, "What goes around comes around." Which is inscrutable but fair, I guess. But she doesn't know much about me and I really haven't ever done anything special for her. (Although I clearly need to now. Ideas welcome.)

4) Pic: It's late in the year, but I think this is a fritillary? They were just soaking up the sunshine and doing that thing where they open and close their wings--as though in pure pleasure. I kind of felt like that myself at odd moments during the day. 

goodbyes and good buys

This has already been a longer trip than our usual getaways, and I'm glad to head home, but I'm also sad to say goodbye. I would never choose to live in this rocky, arid place that is astoundingly beautiful and we have no plans to return in the foreseeable future as we have no family here and there are so many more National Parks to explore. So this is a proper goodbye for now. 

Things that have been absolute lifesavers on this trip--sunhats, sunscreen, snacks, and a backpack hydropack (like Camelback). I may have to make an exception to my no-buy rule because I saw someone in the airport restroom who had a tote they were carrying like a backpack (it had both tote and backpack handles). And now I really want one! I've been a carry-on-only traveler forever, and I think I'd look more grown up with a tote instead of a backpack!

Also: I was embarrassingly in "little lady" mode on this trip. I'm usually an equal partner, but I was extra dependent on this trip what with my busted-up splinted finger and being unable to deal with lifting my own suitcase, not wanting to drive that beast of an SUV, and my freakout (freakouts? I'll never tell!) about falling. I hope this changes back soon.

Pic: Goodbye Colorado River! #LaterPost 10/10