The Waning Gibbous Moon

Sometimes I go for days and days without writing anything of meaning in the writerly sense. I answer email at work and write lesson plans. I write IEPs (a monster known only to the teachers of special education) and transition plans (a similar monster but with one head instead of two). I write grocery lists and to-do lists and phone numbers. But all of that, while involving the application of pen to paper, fails to bring the sense of satisfaction with the world that I find when writing things of a totally non-utilitarian nature.

What I need, to find my happy place, is to throw words on paper - words that flow from one to the next with meaning only in the movement. Failing that I find myself sinking, albeit slowly, into a place where the light is less than bright and skies have never heard of blue and the air … the air is damp and sickly, filling the body with mold that settles into corners which may never feel clean again.

For the past week or so I have found myself in just such a place. Now here I am, outside looking in, and wondering what the heck I’m doing here. Whose life is this, anyway? I don’t recall ever wanting to do half of the things I spend most of my time doing. But here I am.

I know. Some probably will think it self-indulgent to feel one should have a choice in everything one does. I, however, tend to think it is in the choosing that we live a life of meaning. And at the moment I feel as though I have opened a Webster’s Third New International or an Oxford Annotated only to discover they are both incomplete. The words are all there, in a neat alphabetical list, but it is my job to write the definitions. Knowing I will never finish, I am reluctant even to begin.

Perhaps it is the waning of the full moon. I wrote a poem once about the waning gibbous moon. I knew a man once who taught me all the phases, and I liked the sound of that one. Words, after all, are mostly about sound. Their meaning is found in the sound they leave in the air as they fly forth from our tongue.

I would never choose to write the definitions.

Good News, Bad News

It seems there is no good way to say one is grateful that catastrophe did not visit one's front door - when one knows it is because catastrophe went elsewhere. I am glad the danger has passed us by, but I am saddened there is danger for others.

If you cared enough to check the coordinates and track the path of this storm, you will know by now that Ivan is unleashing his wrath on Mobile, Alabama. What we experienced, just to the west of New Orleans, was tropical breezes that allowed us to stay outdoors all day and enjoy the sunshine.

Much preferable to being indoors, behind windows covered with plywood, in a home feeling too much like a tomb.

Ivan, Monday, 5 AM

Coordinates of Ivan - 26.1 N, 87.7 W. Hurricane tracking. We have children here who can't read, yet, but can plot the path of a hurricane. And others whose families have memories so painful or so fearful they faithfully leave town 48 hours in advance of the storm.

I asked my own college-age daughter not to come home for this one. She's great company, and I will and do miss her, but there is really nothing she can do here - except listen to the wind and the rain once it begins. She'll have quite enough going on in Baton Rouge

As for me this morning, I'm watching the animals. Animals seem to know more than we know, much sooner. I have one dog and one cat, each acquired after the demise of relationships I thought would last forever. As I am in the process of moving from a large house to a smallish apartment, I've got no room for more pets - so I've decided to avoid intense relationships.

When I arrived home yesterday afternoon, the two of them were in anxiety mode. Perhaps they were absorbing my own tension - more than perhaps. But they were whining and rubbing and seeking my attention as they normally don't do. This morning, now that the major preparations have been made and I am more relaxed into the waiting, Bella is busying herself with her morning ablution, and Moose is curled in his bed after an early morning "walk."

It is not yet daylight, and I sit here watching the news. They are showing overhead shots of traffic on the interstate backed up from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. Those folks have been leaving New Orleans since yesterday afternoon or earlier. I have no regrets about staying.

But then, I'm not 9 feet below sea level.

Ivan the Terrible

As some of you may know, I live close enough to the Gulf of Mexico to be concerned about the presence of any hurricane that makes it this far. Ivan is a bother. Without being too specific, I will say I am currently west of the strike zone, but not sufficiently west to ignore the need for necessary precaution. Our parish was issued a voluntary evacuation order about 1:30 this afternoon. Parts of the parish are now under mandatory evacuation – mostly those living in low-lying areas or in mobile homes.

Neither of those describes me. I feel relatively secure, well out of the danger of flooding, but there are windows to be boarded up and patio furniture to be stored in the garage and potted plants to removed to a safer haven. Garbage cans must be put away and all items that one might usually have in one’s garden or patio area that can become dangerous as flying objects have to be stored somewhere out of the direct path of the wind that is predicted.

So, I was more than a bit miffed when our school officials insisted on a full day of school today. I could think of nothing more than how much work I had to do before the rain begins. Because once it begins, it will not stop for at least 24 hours. And mucking about in the rain is not my idea of a great time.

I was doubly miffed when I left school to go to the bank for cash in case of emergencies and discovered my bank had closed at noon today – with no warning! Now, that’s a heck of a thing, since they know full well that many people will need cash to get out of town. By that time today, all hotels in Louisiana were full and folks were having to make reservations as far away as Dallas, Texas, and Memphis, Tennessee. Fortunately, I’m not planning on going anywhere. I have a couple of friends coming to stay who are more than a little skittish over the storm. But I would still like to have more than nine dollars in my wallet. Bless the checks and the credit cards!

(I know – I should move on to ATMs, but to tell you the truth, ATM machines seem unsafe to me. They make me a little skittish!)

So, here I sit, in my self-constructed cave, eating pasta and drinking Chardonnay and listening to Nora Jones and Andrea Bocelli and wondering at the pleasures of simple things – of living not with wealth but with the richness of finding joy in the moment.

Even moments such as these.

I will be recoding periodic updates, for those who wish to check back from time to time. Pictures will be forthcoming, for those who’ve never seen sandbags and boards. And for as long as I am able, I will photograph trees swaying in the breeze from the shelter of my front porch.

Left Brain, Right Brain: Battle of the Hemispheres

Having, apparently, no dominant hemisphere, my left brain seems to be in continual defiance of my right brain and vice versa. I write with my right hand, handle many tools with my left; I press the strings of the dulcimer with my left hand, but strum with the right hand pulling the pick toward me, instead of away as most people play. I conjure the most impossible schemes, then take out pencil and paper to map, list or chart ways to achieve them.

Generally, however, I am able to focus the side of the brain needed to accomplish whatever task is at hand. Today, it would seem, as I rode ‘round and ‘round on the tractor, cutting grass I had neglected for several weeks, I was thinking too far to the right. I was considering how some people simply do not fit in the environment in which they are born.

In particular, I was reflecting on two students I work with, both quite gifted. Student A is mechanically gifted and cares little for academia - give him an engine to redesign or the task of creating an implement to achieve a certain mechanical task, and leave him alone to do it, and he will outperform most others. But he does not do well in school and is quite miserable and creates misery for his teachers who consider him to be obstinate and non-compliant.

Student B is academically gifted and has taught himself many things beyond the level of his peers. He would learn best if he were allowed to teach the class - sort of on-the-job training. But this is not acceptable to our way of doing things and, therefore, while he is generally quite happy, he creates a bit of misery for his teachers who consider him to be arrogant and non-compliant.

I can’t come up with a valid argument for compliance for either of these young men. Sometimes the adjustment to one’s environment exacts too great a penalty on the conforming personality. Something very rare and precious is lost. I think that will be the case for each of these students, and I am not proud of my complicity in achieving this end.

So I was, contemplating the process of individuation, and how this might best be accomplished within a system which follows too closely a more scientific framework - a substantive misinterpretation of John Dewey - and singing “A Bridge over Troubled Waters.” It was about at that point in my own reverie, as I reached the last beat of “I will lay me down,” that I barreled forward in my pursuit of reaching the hard to reach corners of the yard and hit a brick wall, literally, managing somehow to break the tractor’s steering mechanism.

Now I am faced with not one conundrum, but with two. And the right brain has no bright ideas for the left brain to map out on paper.

I clearly need both Student A and Student B.

September 11 - An International Day of Poetry

Dare to dream.

Please visit and read http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/.