Reason Breeds Insanity

Yesterday, I met my friend Myra and her son, Phil, for dinner and a poetry reading at City Lights Books. We had Italian food and some nice sorbetto for dessert. I had Lychee fruit, and Phil had this huge chocolate hazelnut crepe with whipped creme. The pasta was homemade, and mine had a nice vegetable and white wine sauce. When Jim got here, we checked into the hotel and then went around the corner to a sports bar for some beers. We shared a pitcher of a San Francisco IPA, which was pretty tasty, nice and hoppy.
Today we went to Fisherman’s Wharf and went on a “duck tour.” The captain was part of the Swedish military that invaded Normandy, so it was especially interesting to hear him compare the bay to the beach at Normandy. Our amphibious boat thing was actually one that was used in WWII, so that made if even more interesting. We spent the day walking around and riding the old cable-cars that you see in movies.
Since Internet access is $2.95 for fifteen minutes, I’d better go.

I guess I should have worked a little harder over Spring Break, because now I am in my office grading. I will probably be here until about 5 AM. I’m an idiot. It’s official.

Do you remember when you were in elementary school? Every year when school started your teacher would make you write an essay about what you did over the summer. Mine usually said something like I played and read a lot. My friend usually went to Disneyland, to King’s Island, or to relatives’ houses. I always just played and read and swam in the pond in our front yard.

If I had to write an essay about what I did over spring break, it would say:

For my spring break, I felt alive. I felt more alive than I have in months. Everyday I walked three or four miles with my dogs. I walked in the morning just as the temperature was turning toward spring and just as the sun was coming up above the bridge over Martin Luther King Blvd. I saw the mergansers, wood ducks, blue herons, and Canadian geese as the snow thawed into the lake, as the lake spilled into the river, as the basketball stayed suspended by the pressure of the water just west of the dam. I saw some hawks and an accidental cardinal, too. The fog billowed up from the brown churning water as the train passed overhead on the trestle that groaned and squealed with the weight of its load. Everyday I read a little bit: the newspaper, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, The New York Times Book Review, other random books, and the journal of the Pop Culture Association. Everyday I learned more about who I want to be and more about who I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be strapped to this place, this life, this path. I want to move, to breathe, to be carefree and contemplative, not giving a damn whether my ideas pass rank for journals, professors, conferences. I want to just be for the sake of being instead of being for someone else. I don’t want to HAVE to work. I want to be able to be occupied by life instead of being imprisoned by life. I learned that life is about what you make of it, not about what other people of it for you. I feel like I live my life for the sake of others’ expectations and sometimes those expectations are too high. I want to be able to walk around the land and fall in love the idea of being alive, but there is always a deadline. There is always a time when things have to be done. There is always a constraint. I just want to live indefinitely, with no boundaries. For my spring break, I became restless.

Every year, when I was little, I wrote the same essay. Every once in a while I would toss in a variation about playing softball or going to summer school, but my general essay remained the same. I played. I read. I swam. I played some more. I always got an A. Maybe it would have been helpful if someone would have said to me then:

You will never be settled, so don’t settle down. You may be entirely happy, but you will never be settled. When you are in your thirties, you will long to play. You will long to read. You will long to swim. You will be content but never complacent. You will never stop moving in your soul. You will always be restless. Never settle.

“Just as you have the instinctive natural desire to be happy and overcome suffering, so do all sentient beings; just as you have the right to fulfill this innate aspiration, so do all sentient beings. So on what exact grounds do you discriminate?”

“Genuine human friendship is on the basis of human affection, irrespective of your position. Therefore, the more you show concern about the welfare and rights of others, the more you are a genuine friend. The more you remain open and sincere, then ultimately more benefits will come to you. If you forget or do not bother with others, then eventually you will lose your own benefit.”

Some days I lean more toward Buddhist thought. Today is one of them. I lean particularly toward listening to and applying to my life the wisdom of the Dali Lama, because I think he embodies compassion. I put Mother Teresa in this same position of authority in my life—not Godlike authority, in case there are any religious wackos reading this)—mostly because I think we all need models of grace and compassion to strive toward. Earthly models. People we can tangibly touch, easily see, and actually hear talking about their struggles and successes in living out a life for others. I mean the last part of the second quote rings true: when we help others, we help ourselves, and when we don’t, we receive no benefits. It isn’t like we give to others solely to get the benefits; but we give because it is better to give than to receive. This giving is a giving to all sentient beings. Giving to all equally and freely.

On what grounds do I discriminate?

I just finished the necessary evil of filling out the taxes and sending in the financial aid papers. I love that we can do all that on line now. It took about an hour to do both my taxes and Bec’s and to do my financial aid forms. Maybe, next year I will qualify for some type of financial aid. I doubt it. Apparently, with a gross income of 26,000 dollars, I should still have almost 5,000 dollars available to pay for college. I am not sure how that works out, but I guess when the “poverty level” income for a single person is only 19,000 in Indiana that extra 2,000 dollars a year that I would have left after paying for college should pay for books, etc. I find it strange that in this amazing “land of opportunity” that we can’t find some other way to help people go to school!

I am not talking about my own needs here; I CAN pay for school and pay bills. But, I also know that if I were a poor, uneducated person who came from a family of people who held menial labor jobs, I would not know how to survive on $26,000 and pay for school, books, expenses, and the like. Or maybe I would know better how to do it! Would college even be on my radar, though? I just read a great story about a student in Indianapolis who grew up homeless and in foster care. He went to college and now works as a counselor at his church. He works to provide community for college students who have no other community: homeless teens, first generation college students, and people who are far from home. This is what the world is about.

This is what I seek to do with my life. I would love to start a program for the community that helps first generation college graduates with acclimation to college life, that provides community for them, and that gives a strong support system to those students who are statistically the least likely to succeed. Maybe this is the reason I plan to teach college. Maybe this is the reason I am drawn to teaching at a two-year school or a smaller college? I just think there is so much more going on in students’ lives than what we see on the surface. I want to create community for them in a new and real way. I am not sure that I do. But I try.

EDIT:
Stuff from my other, old, defunct blog.
I thought quite a bit about going out for lunch today, but then I reminded myself that part of the reason I am vegan is to save money. Besides I have a whole bunch of “sloppy joe’s” left, so I had those for dinner. For breakfast I had a cookie that I made last night. I used a standard oatmeal cookie recipe, but baked them in bars. I also added carob chips, graham flour, bananas (instead of eggs), cayenne pepper, clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and coconut. The little bars are a veritable Tropical Luau in my mouth, and the cayenne gives them just the kick they need and deserve! They are the perfect little snack or breakfast item, and they are fall apart goodness. As you can tell, they are spectacular, probably the best thing I have made recently.

My plan is to make several things to freeze for when school goes back in session. I will be in paper writing (and grading) madness, so having some frozen delicacies ready to thaw or bake would be pretty helpful.

The dogs and I walked for about an hour and a half this morning. I was a little saddened to see that we had really only covered about 3.4 miles because of all the stopping to roll in the snow (Lily) and peeing on things (Sydney)! We plodded merrily along and were no worse for wear when we arrived at home. I worry sometimes about the salt on the sidewalks and roads when there has been a lot of snow, but the dogs don’t seem to mind much. They just stop periodically and drink from puddles, standing in them to let the water cover their feet. I know the salt is hard on their pads, but you would never know by watching them walk.