Twenty Years Plus

Today, after four hours of teaching, I will attend the University of Arizona Service Luncheon. One gets invited to this lunch on "milestone" years of service: ten, fifteen, twenty, and on. My milestone year is twenty. That is twenty full-time years here at the UA. I also have four years of service at ASU, three years in Tucson Unified School District, several years teaching in Mexico and Ecuador, nine years as a grad-student TA, a year teaching Adult Basic Education and ESL in the prison, and some odd tutoring gigs. All in all, I have been teaching for a living for thirty-six years. But today, I mark the last twenty here at the UA. I get to tuck them under my belt, file them away, take one last look around before I turn toward the door, the one that opens onto what happens next.

Honest Work

They were in my dreams again last night. My students, that is. They were there, waiting for what it was I, we, were going to do. I threw the curriculum out the window, so to speak (there are no windows in the basement classroom in which we meet), and said "Write what you feel and think about something important to you." Magically, we all got to work and began to have a real conversation. Oh, it messy, chaotic, and garbled, but something was happening. Students were up out of their desks, reading to each other, talking, laughing, having heart-to-hearts. I felt blood rush back into my extremities, felt tension drain out my hands, felt my brain spark with small flashes of lightning. I said, "Pick your genre; no, mix them. First a response, then an analysis, then a synthesis of the two: right and left brains, emotions and thought, heart and head. Tell a story. Let your words be the basis for action you dream of taking in the world. Work on our own; work together." It was a mess, I say, a tangled, glowing, beginning of something that would never be fully resolved. But we were on our way. The honor way.

You Have to Wonder

It's not just about merit. Definitely not about merit. Politics and membership have more to do with it. Some get let through the fence keeping them down and out while others, no matter what they do, get blocked again and again. I happen to be one of those who didn't make it for some reason. Sure, I had an OK run at some small successes, but they were all pretty bush-league. It could have something to do with the MFA Mafia. That's a tight-knit tribe that watches the score closely and takes you out if they don't like you. Or it could be fashion. I just didn't make the right moves at the right time. Or it could be work. Honestly I didn't work as hard I as I could have. Part of that was due to fear, and the belief that I didn't deserve success. Whatever it was, the game is over and I lost. That's a hard pill to swallow. I don't feel so bad for me -- my ego -- but I do feel some shame for not having given light to the gifts burning inside me. That one stings.

Picking Up the Thread

The day yawns and stretches and rubs its eyes as light rises behind the eastern ridges. The air is cool, sixty-eight degrees, and it is a Tuesday according to my calendar. I have exactly five days of meeting classes left in the semester. Right now, I don't yet feel the urgency to get ready to meet those classes, to gird my loins for work in the trenches of literacy. That will come later. Right now it's time to remember what it is that I wanted to do with this short life. The moment is the definition of potential, and I am afraid that I cannot live up to that potential, feel some shame about that. I have taken a few wrong turns, taken the easy way, and ended up in a dead end. Not sure what to do about that, how to rectify that mistake. Why has it been so hard to mesh my desires with the demands of livelihood? Time to feel the loss and to act anyway. I don't know why it has gone so awry, but I do know that today I will write, teach, and try to make my word visible in action.

Connecting the Dots

Caught between the twin inevitabilities of drought and rising population, the Desert Southwest is looking down the barrel of severe water shortage. It's been coming for some time now, and, like Capetown, South Africa, we are drawing down reservoirs on the Colorado River to a dangerous low, a Day Zero, when no one will be getting the allotment they are entitled to (on paper, anyway). Groundwater wells, the old Plan B, have to be drilled so deep it's too expensive to pump the water up and out. All of this is exacerbated by the swings of climate change and all that CO2 belched out by your cherished chariots. What does this have to do with me you might ask. Well, dear pilgrim, it means that the constant growth you so dearly depend on cannot be sustained. It's time to learn to get creative, to do more with less. That, or carry on with denial, the belief that the dots mean nothing, that you can do more of what you've always done, hoping that nature really doesn't matter as you move into your virtual horn of plenty.

Interviewer: What's the most important meditation we can do now?
Dalai Lama: Critical thinking, followed by action. Discern what your world is. Know the plot, the scenario of this human drama. And then figure out where your talents might fit in to make a better world.

— Dalai Lama

Twit For Tat

Middle school parking lot pissing contests have more verbal panache than Trump's Presidential Pronouncements. The President of the United States just tweeted that James Comey is a "slime-ball" because Comey published his view of Trump as a glorified mafioso, along with other, more serious revelations. (Mr. Trump did not deny the validity of the comparison, but dignified it with his tweet.) This level of discourse, a kind of pre-pubescent mano-a-mano, degrades language as much as it degrades the dignity of the Commander in Chief, all while dumbing down the level of political discourse. Name calling has so much become a substitute for debating issues that the news doesn't even know what the issues are (income inequality? security threats from climate change? crumbling infrastructure/education/health care? nuanced diplomacy?). It's just tweets. This nattering nabob banter makes my brain hurt even more than bad TV sitcoms or game shows, which, by the way, would serve as great "interrogation" techniques. No wonder the minions, like Paul Ryan, are jumping ship. He will now be able to go in search of intelligent dialogue in the taverns of his Wisconsin hometown of Janesville or just run to the woods to escape the brain-numbing broadcasts of insults masquerading as leadership. As much I disagree with him, I'd like to join him in his flight.  Since I can't get away yet, could somebody take the battery out of the President's phone and hide it? Please?

Limbo

The calm of another morning betrays nothing of the pending upheaval. The fountain is running, the hummingbirds gather at the feeder, and Simone snores on the recliner. All of this is about to change. I don't know who will fill the hummingbird feeder, take care of the fountain, or how Simone will adapt to the New Mexico digs. I do know I have work to do. Teaching, prison, house cleaning all will take every moment I have. No time to think about what's coming. It will just get here and I'll deal with it. The limbo, though, is deceptive, a bit too quiet.