So, I’ve been gone. Maybe you thought I suddenly became debilitatingly shy, or that my fingers had fallen off and it was taking me an extra long time to figure out how to palm the right keys, but the truth is, I was out living the good life. I have frolicked and gamboled, made merry (didn’t catch her last name, though), and have gone hither and yon clicking my heels in unrestrained joy for the last three weeks. Verily, I did it, and yea, it was good!

Anyway, I know the suspense is killing you, so I’ll tell you: I went to France! I traveled around the country and saw beautiful, bucolic countryside, lots of history, tons of art, and was able to spend time in the frenzy and elegance that is Paris. It was magnificent, and it inspired an explosion of thoughts and ideas, which for me is kind of unusual.

So I want to tell you everything, on account of I’m a giver, but one of things that I thought about on my trip was the art of the personal statement, which involves forethought and self-editing. Those things are the opposite of how I have approached chronicling my experiences and musings. I usually speak first and think later. This has lead to me making important declarations like, “I like puppies!” or “Showering is overrated!” While these things are true, perhaps it is not necessary that I tout them so publicly or state them like personal credos. These are not the things I would want engraved on my tombstone. Maybe this blog is not the forum for my unedited, deepest, secret thoughts. I mean, should you put your personal biz on the internet? Air your dirty laundry in the cybersphere? Put your poop on parade? How much can one expose, while still keeping a sense of privacy, and obeying the appropriate norms of society?

The fully disclosed, stark naked answers to these questions remains to be seen! Stay tuned!

P.S. Happy Bastille Day!!!

I remember when the policeman changed from being my friend to being the enemy. He used to be the patient face that looked down from under the visored hat and offered his hand, strong and capable, when I told him I was lost at the mall. Ne became someone to be feared and avoided, eyes straight, head down, no contact; he became the enemy when I started getting high. I was quick to judge when I felt I was being quickly judged. Later I learned about cops who were bought, who were sadists, who put people down to make themselves feel strong and powerful, who coerced, abused, misused, lied, profiled and killed.

Now when someone mentions the po-po, I expect a story about fear and intimidation.

And I remember watching a Late, Late Show movie about a crazy preacher with tattoos on his knuckles, chasing two wide-eyed children through a black and white nightmare under a huge luminous moon in a cloudless night. The moon looked like God, and watched, blankfaced, lighting the way for both victim and stalker, lions and lambs, while the preacher, evil incarnate, pressed on, relentless. Up way past bedtime, hugging my knees, terrified by the images flickering from the tiny box of a tv on the table, it occurred to me fro the first time that priests(or rabbis, imams, etc.) could be bad, caught up in the human battle of love and hate, called to the higher powers of greed, desire, ambition and psychosis instead of salvation, redemption, service and peace. I had never before imagined that those who were supposed to be good could be horribly, maniacally evil, and that the worst kind of monster could be human, even those who consider themselves to be holy. Later in life, evil preachers escaped the box on the table and exploded in the headlines, dirty sneaking fingers snaking into innocents, poisoning their futures and creating black and white memories to keep the victims forever children, being hunted down mercilessly while others watch impervious and still as the moon in a cloudless, endless night.

Now whenever someone speaks about a religious leader, I usually think of Jim Jones, or Ted Haggard, or some out-of-touch cardinal who actually believes he is doing anyone a favor by transferring some disgusting pervert from one parish to another instead of seeing that he rots in jail in this life and Hell in the next.

I know when the good guys of my youth, the regular Joes and stand-up-fellas, became those from which I had to protect myself: bankers, politicians, people who knock on the door, people asking if I can spare a dime, doctors, lawyers – they all fell from grace, went from ‘buddy’ to ‘bastard’.

Now, nationally, teachers are becoming the enemy. They are vilified, mistrusted, and demonized.

I think one would be hard pressed to find those who do not consider the public school system broken.  Our schools are mismanaged, ineffective and are, often, educationally stifling. The problems that beset them are large, unwieldy, multi-faceted, complex, and deeply ingrained.

Because of all this, it is difficult to imagine that the root cause of these myriad problems lies solely in bad teachers. Of course, there are bad teachers. You have sat, or slept in, or skipped their classes. We all have. But there are so many more good teachers than bad, and there are so many things to teach other than standardized test matter. At my school, we spend more time teaching students how to take the test than we do the actual test content. Their overall scores are much more important to our school than comprehension, the ability to apply information, or the desire to think about information abstractly, in order to problem-solve, evaluate, or form new ideas based on prior knowledge.

On the last day of school, my principal told me that because my students’ test scores were low, it would not be fair to “jeopardize their futures” by allowing me to teach them. My students are just learning English. Some of them have only been in this country for a year and a half, none of them more than three years, and only a quarter of them passed the test that is given to native speakers in the 10th grade. I believe the reason they didn’t perform as well as students who have been in the country for five or more years, (five years is the average time it takes for a learner to achieve fluency in a new language), or since birth, is because they simply don’t have enough English yet. After three years, I doubt I could pass a high school test designed for native speakers in Spanish, German, Japanese or Urdu. Could you? Instead of looking at the sum of my career in order to determine my efficacy as a teacher, I was judged by others’ performances on one test, taken one time.  I guess I feel the need to explain, but this is not my point. This is what is happening to teachers around the country. The public seems to believe that if we are able to fire low performing teachers – like me- we will have schools that are suited to all students’ needs, where everyone can achieve in the same way, where failure is not an option and everyone is gifted and talented. We will close all achievement gaps and the underlying problems that lead to these gaps – poverty, homelessness, a lack of parental or family guidance and support, drug addiction, cognitive capacity, hopelessness, a history of under-education, special needs, behavioral issues, a lack of basic skills, apathy, malnutrition, the need to work to support one’s self or family, teen pregnancy- these things will disappear if we are diligent in weeding out the bad apples that make up our educational core. We know where the blame should fall. Teachers are the new enemy.

I wonder what people think about when they hear about teachers. That we are stupid, lazy, greedy, apathetic? Some of us are unintelligent, rigid, tired, and arrogant. Some are bullies, assholes, pedophiles, megalomaniacs, and alcoholics. It’s true.

It’s easy to forget that while there are corrupt, despicable cops, there are also those who will help you fix your tire on the highway, search your house when you think there is a burglar in it, or hold your hand, get you a milkshake, and wait with you until your mom comes to get you when you are lost. There are religious leaders who believe in mercy and generosity, who are happy when they can lighten someone else’s load, who give the best advice that they can, who comfort the dying, and who cry when they cannot find the answers. And there are teachers who want to teach about literature and the language of numbers, about ideas and love and respect and questioning, about who you can be, and imagination and science, and finding ways to be happy, productive, engaged and fulfilled.

But still.

When we are afraid, we blame. It makes us feel better to be able to have a culprit, someone we can hang high from the rafters, and when he is gone, so is the threat and the danger. It makes us feel better to know that at least we are trying to do something. Too often we jump at the quick fix, the easy answer, and by doing so, we bury the real problems and don’t fix anything.

Dividing whole groups of people into one thing or another – us or them, friend or foe – makes us paranoid and weak. It’s also the first thing fascists do on the road to genocide.

We are all human. We are the monsters and the mothers. We slit each other’s throats and save each other’s lives.We are the frenemy.

So, I guess this all boils down to “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” plus a healthy dose of “judge not lest ye be judged.”

Sorry you had to read all of that just to get to a summary of cliches. I feel better though! Maybe I should turn off the computer, get off the couch and go for a walk.

That’s something to consider.

http://www.themovieadvocate.com/2010/10/night-of-hunter.html

Trump’s Toilet Tarantula

Between two states made of desert, on a highway that rolls out like a drunk’s beer-burp, there is a rest stop that looks like a plantation, like a modern day Mt. Vernon on steroids, a huge, gleaming turn-of the-century-post-modern hulk of stucco and steel erected in more prosperous times to give the road weary a place to crap and masturbate in sterile excess and comfort.

Today, there are no cars parked, no eighteen-wheelers sleeping in the lot.

There are picnic tables of granite that twinkles under the char-broiler sun, but no trees to protect the niave traveler who sits unthinkingly on the smooth stone bench and burns a slat-shaped brand into his doughy white ass.

The walk to the potty-mansion seems to be made of crushed oysters, glass beads and pebbles from a meandering river that can’t be found in fewer than five hundred miles. And once inside, OH! The princess and the pee, I shit you not! The sinks gleam, the floors are marble – it’s Trump’s Toilets. I open stall number one and the door slides open without creak or pause. The toilet paper roll is full and fluffy, and even folded into a little triangle, like some fairy maid ironed it into a perfect pull tab. The water is still, clear and serene. Feng shui on the highway.

BUT, dark and furry, on the rim of the bright white toilet, sits an enormous spider, a tarantula bigger than the size of my fist. It’s trying to hypnotize me with red voodoo eyes. It is very patient. It raises itself up on it’s back legs, surprisingly lightly for what appears to be a hockey-puck hot-glue-gunned with Wookie hair.

Either I am exhaling loudly between my teeth, or the bastard is hissing at me.

I picture it springing the five feet between us with lightning speed, wrapping its spiky, furry legs (they would probably feel like poison needles) around my head as it quickly devoured my face. First it would paralyze me, then eat my face.

I back away slowly. When I am out of the bathroom, I turn and run.

When an entire state is made of desert, the world is your catbox, right? Who needs marble toilets?

Who does That?

In the air conditioned glide, we sail through the streets of the city, dressed in our big-night-out-silks-and-starch. I turn around to smile at the kids and my sparkly earrings kiss my cheek and whisper to the curls of my hair. We are all divine, well-scrubbed, combed and scented, our conversation sun on the waves sparkling. Like an Audrey Hepburn gray rabbit evolving into the gazelle she always was, we pirouette out of laundry and toilets, grocery shopping and traffic, into a starry night of luxury, white cotton napkins, two forks, truffles and good wine. Released from the chains of the mundane, tonight, we dance!

Downtown we stop at a light. Evening is making itself known when we see the men on the curb out of the corners of our eyes. Snaky tattoos, veins of blue ink over blue veins pulsing. Gold teeth winking. Big swigging bottles, brown and green, clinking on the the cement. From behind the window glass, I imagine that I can smell their breath.

It’s a long light. The kids go quiet. The song on the radio is insipid, treacle. The men, maybe five of them, big and strong and sweaty, exchange glances. One breaks from the crowd. My eyes round, no corners now, like an anime Bambi, skinless grapes, the dot at the bottom of a question mark.

His hands look like meat. They swing loose at his sides. He has a long scar that runs from cheek to chin, and a triangle of three black dots tattooed on his temple. The trinity points are a gangster’s compass: hospital, prison or grave.

Certainly, he’s not coming towards us. He is, but he’s just crossing the street. We’re all smiling – can’t he see how friendly we are? The kids’ quiet is louder now.

He stops, directly in front of our purring car. He looks through the windshield, takes it all in.

I will my earrings to grow dull, my dress to burlap, my hair, newly blond, to un-bun and spring wildly from my skull, thick and black. Fierce. My sparrow muscles tense. Fight or flight. Or, maybe, scared little bird, I will only flap and flutter.

He puts his beer, a big ol’ 40, on the car, casually, looking me straight in the eye. His eye is flint. He stretches to his full height. He lifts his stomach, a massive gut, an over-inflated medicine ball, in both his brisket hands, rubbing it like it could spew the future, lifting it high like he’s bowling a strike, and then BAM!, crashes it down on the hood of the car, a wrecking ball, a meteor aiming for a colossal crater, tyrannosaurus thud that shudders the whole car, bouncing it up and down on it’s fine German suspension like a low rider in the alley. BAM!

I grab the dashboard. Alex falls off the slippery leather in the back seat and Isabelle’s car seat tips precariously. I hear Daniel’s heart beating fast and loud. The man’s eyes are still locked on mine.

Silence. We are stunned, shocked, astonished, trapped in a snow-globe shaken blur of disbelief.

And then, like beer bottles thrown against a graffiti-tagged wall, the men explode in laughter, firecrackers of laughter, all Fat Albert and the gang AH-HAHAHAHA, all Mushmouth “You-buh should-buh seen-buh look-buh on-buh, yo’- buh face –buh!”, HI- larious with a capital HI, back-slappin’, knee-shakin, 40-tippin’, high fivin’, end-zone dancin’  laughter all around, and the big man grinning ear-to-ear-like a watermelon fresh split at a picnic.

What else was there to do? With a slow roll of steady claps, I began a wave of applause that grew into a tsunami. Alex climbed back up on the seat and shouted, “Awesome! That was so awesome!”  Isabelle decided not to cry and soon her xylophone angel baby tinkle of a laugh joined the hoots and gravelly guffaws of the guys on the corner. Daniel pressed the button that unzipped the windows and said, “Respect, Big Man! That is one powerful gut!” The man took a low bow, as low as his enormous belly allowed, and removed his stomach from the hood. I looked to see if it was dented, and we shouted, “Bravo! Bravo!” as we merged into traffic on our way to hors d’oeuvres, champagne and chandeliers.

Hey! Thank you so much for your comments! I’ve been hesitant to show this kind of writing, so I appreciate your feedback – especially when it’s positive!

So why is it

If Adam and Eve were created in God’s image

And they were the embodiment,

the most beautiful, evolved things

ever to roam paradise, the perfection of all of God’s earth

green and fragrant, satisfying to touch and tongue,

Did they,

Immediately upon discovering their nudity,

Feel shame?

Cancerous, punishing, corrosive shame?

Why didn’t they feel

Joy, awe, wonder, amazement, pride

At seeing their perfection

Their beauty,

The thrill of no better,

Their Holiness,

When they looked down

and saw the root of inspiration, desire, creativity

what it is to be human

in their flesh,

cradled between their legs?

After West, Heading South

The highway stretches out long and wavery. A/C wheezing , windshield spotlighting relentless glare, grass frazzling brown on the shoulder. My eyes spiral over fields of corn, fields of wheat, fields of weeds, fenced fields offering two dead coyotes at the gate, heads spiked on the posts, mouths frozen in leering hyena  grins – who’s laughing now, funny guy? Radio picking up static, car picking up speed, mind on cruise control as small towns break out like a rash of zits: Dinnette. Victor. Dustpan. Tiny burgs of nothing, Hoovilles, dust specks on a dandelion, waiting for a strong wind.

One gas station. A store that, judging from the front lot, sells broken, rusted things. “Kountry Krafts – Kome on in!”

I looked up. I don’t know why. There, on an overpass, on a bridge joining Nunca to Nada, is a tall black man, black like Sudan, like coffee grounds, like the black boiling tar under my black rubber tires, head to foot in a bright yellow robe that billows in a breeze I cannot feel on my sweat soaked skin. Banana skinned chocolate. Long citrine sleeves belling out like trumpets, like the RCA gramophone, ringing out a golden era. His face was obscured as I vroomed towards him, but on his onyx head, like the top of a summer crookneck squash, sat a little hat, bright yellow beanie, and as I pass beneath, a million miles an hour, he extends his arms, palms out, raising his hands to the side and up, Vitruvian Man, up, floating balloons heliuming above to the big blue and white, and then over his head, a glorious ascension, and though I can’t feel the breeze, I feel him breathing the air, the rush of in and out from his nostrils, flared like his sleeves, and for a moment, it’s as if I’ve stopped, suspended in his amber inhalation, as the man who is the blinding lemon sun rising on a bridge over nowhere, either blesses me,

or curses me,

forever.

The Premise

They say it’s all about the journey

The wandering hero discovering the nobler self

Deific feats of strength and mind,

acrobatic academics who leap until they fly,

Acts of wit, trickery or wisdom that Houdini the hopeless, last second,

Onto a golden ladder reaching to immortality.

Or

Errors in judgment that immolate,

Searing the soul in a holocaust of conscience,

Which rises again, clean phoenix,

Soaring on the wings of benevolence

Into clouds of self-righteous ecstasy,

The wisdom of experience, repackaged and

Offered to the masses selflessly,

Milk and honey dipped bread-braids on gleaming silver platters,

Or

Suffering, cruel and sustained, that grinds like glass under stone,

Like the reopened wound,

Like the acid of infection,

Like heartbreak revisited in a dream,

Like bone against bone.

That’s the hero’s journey. You have to come out better for having suffered through it.

I am not a hero.

I never learn the lesson.

Sometimes, I even forget to suffer.

Sometimes, there is no redemption, no angel glow beam heralding the end of the tunnel.

Still, I do love the ride.