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October 24, 2002- dateline my office, a bigass community colegio in a suburb of Chicago. You know, chicas, sometimes you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need. Moving here has been a mixed blessing. The money is way good, and I do like teaching. But what is it I left behind? What has it been like going from white Iowa to whiter suburbia?
Hijo, I'm not sure I know. Pero, stay tuned. Even if it's just me who cares, i'm gonna figure this out.
October 27/28th,2002, too goddam early in the AM- my office again. Well, spent the weekend with net-friends at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, seeing The Time of Your Life twice. And yeah-- it was really great... Only prob was I missed my egghead friends' academic commentary on Saroyan and what was happening in the play. Jeff Perry, the lead as Joe, was fabulously incredible. I'm in awe.
Of course, now I have to get back to work and I have no real interest in it... I keep trying to figure why students are seemingly so damn lazy-- it's not like my class is that hard, man. IT's more fun to update my websites, you know? But... I mean hell. I think I'm a good teacher and these guys need someone who will work to make them excited about this stuff-- if I have to juggle, I will, me entiendes?
I still don't like the suburbs. I try to bury my head in my little crackerbox apartment with the cats and pretend I'm somewhere other than suburbia. Sometimes it works, and then I step outside and goddamn if they ain't just too many bigass, useless wastoid SUVs. So I run back in, put on a pointlessly, moslty mindless tape of "Nash Bridges" or something. Fuck this facing the music thing. Been there, done that, got the bootlegs, you know? Sigh. Jeff Perry-- you rock.
October 28, 2002, tambien the oficina-- You know, when the virtual world gets weirder than the real world, there's something going on... I still can't seem to deal with the fact some people see 'net happenings as "real", as events in the same way face to face things are. It's a weird illness... and it's totally contagious. Some people out there have a highly overdeveloped, somewhat scary sense of what's "real". Ah me. And, I'm getting deeper into administrative BS, which might be good for the old tenure thing, but wreaks havoc on my life and means I still can't organize it...
And then people are killing people EVERYWHERE-- Moscow, all over the middle East, in the US... when did the world become so OVERTLY violent? Did the US have something to do with that? Hell, we even bombed, accidentally or not, poor Canucks. What did they ever do to us except amuse and provide hockey players?
So I try to "in the time of my life, live." I've been getting into Saroyan's "The Time of YOur LIfe" as a kind of semi-buddhist attempt to live fully in the moment... poor Joe, though, it's like he lives EVERYONE's lives in the immediate moment. It's so painful yet liberating, agonizing and revelatory. I think I'm gonna have my kiddos deal with it, and see if we can't learn something baou twriting by looking at the play. Besides, we can go see Jeff Perry talk about it on Thursday coming up.
Sometimes, I become convinced I'm not mean enough to live in this world.
October 29, 2002-- Today I took my class (well, tried to!) on a little mindwalk, trying to explore their sense of who they are, and figuring if we can simply BE who we are without trying to DO anything. I'm not sure it got thru, and I'm not sure they're gonna learn anything, but it was the most fun and most depth I've felt in the class this year. Maybe it'll be useful.
The day is damn cold and gray, and I'm hungry and of course tired, and sometimes I wonder if I'm ever NOT gonna be tired.. Everything in the world seems so nonsensical, so absurd, and even though I know that's how it is, I, like most people, find it very hard to live that insecurity. And then sometimes I jsu think I live too much in my own head, as fascinating as that can be...:) But, at least now, I find I'm not so upset and angry and reactionary. I don't know if that bodes well for the revolution, but... the revolution has to live on its own anyway!
HEY-- THE REST OF THESE RAVES WILL BE AT THE WEBLOG LINK ABOVE
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