I was a shy and painfully self-aware kid from about 6 years old through college. My adolescence was filled with depression and self-doubt, and I wasn’t doing anything positive with my life other than running a lot and writing self-absorbed emails.
I’m pretty sure my father must have been relieved when I finally left home and went to Lake Tahoe to work at a conference center. What started as a temporary, seasonal gig of cleaning bathrooms and making beds and hiking turned into a year-round thing. I discovered I really enjoyed working hard and I took satisfaction in a toilet well-cleaned. I moved into management and attempted to teach others how to work with an attitude of service.
I gained strength and confidence, and slowly shifted from self-destructive habits to disciplined effort. I was finally, in other words, growing up.
A couple years into this, my father offered to come all the way up to drive me back home, since I didn’t own a car at that time. I must have also invited him to come and stay, which he could do for free at the conference center as my guest, and maybe there was some part of him that was interested in just being up there. But he declined staying for longer than a night.
We drove from Tahoe down to the coast, and camped out somewhere amidst gently rolling, grassy hills overlooking the Pacific ocean.
The breeze was steady and strong, the blades of long grass moving in undulating ribbons across the hills. I don’t remember anyone else being anywhere in sight.
We didn’t have a light, so once it got dark, we went to bed.
I don’t remember talking much with my dad or anything we might have said. Once in the tent, listening to the breeze, I fell fast asleep.
I just remember a sense of peace, and a closeness with my father I hadn’t felt before. We hadn’t ever camped out like that, and never would again.
I think this is when my relationship with my father changed, because my relationship with myself and my place in the world had changed. There was a mutual appreciation that grew quietly and steadily over the years as I further found my independent footing in life.
I was an awkward kid. Hell, I was awkward all the way up through college and beyond. I was so self-aware, self-absorbed, introverted, and painfully shy that I had brain scans in 4th grade because I was getting headaches all the time and they wanted to make sure I didn’t have a tumor, and it turned out to just be from self-created stress.
I have a relatively vivid memory of an afternoon at a Family Fun Center in Clairmont Mesa with my dad at the full bloom of that awkward self-consciousness.
The Family Fun Center was one of those go-to places for bored kids. Mini-golf, arcade, go-karts, and baseball pitching machines, it had a little bit of everything (sounds like they are bringing it back . . .). I remember going there up through my teens to kill time.
My father and I probably played a round of mini-golf, maybe grabbed some pizza. Then my dad wanted to do the go-karts. Or maybe I wanted to, but then backed out. I don’t remember anything up until this point.
All I know is that I got intimidated by the go-karts. Maybe it was the underlying aggression of the activity, or maybe it was some deep-seated fear that I would not be able to do it right or to “perform” in the natural, fun way everyone else seemed to be able to. Maybe it was because everyone would be watching me, waiting their turn, judging my moves.
All I know is that I balked. I refused to do it.
Wait.
Another buried detail just resurfaced as I began to relive this retelling.
This must have been 5th grade, because I’m now remembering that I was wearing glasses for maybe the first time out in public, and I was incredibly embarrassed about wearing them. All I could think was that people were looking at me and making fun of me.
So I was in an especially precarious state of self-consciousness that day, and for whatever reason, I decided that I just couldn’t do the go-karts.
My dad must have paid for it already or something, I don’t remember that part. But I remember that my dad went ahead and did the go-karts himself, as I stood on the side and watched, feeling miserable, awkward in my glasses, hating myself, watching my dad bump into and get bumped by other kids, all having a blast.
I felt abandoned. I felt like I wasn’t the kid who my dad really wanted — like the kids who he bumped into in the g0-kart, just having fun, being normal.
I must have been a royal, sorry pain in the ass that day. It would have been really hard for my dad to understand just how embarrassed I was by my glasses, and why I was being so lame about go-karts and who knows what else. And he probably was hoping that by pushing forward with the go-kart, I would suck it up and decide to do it at the last second — but I was so petrified (for whatever reason lost in time) that I still refused.
I doubt my father would have remembered that day. He wouldn’t have known that I was getting bullied by an older kid at school that year. He wouldn’t have known that I was so mortified by wearing glasses that I went through my next few years in school not wearing them and somehow getting by in class even though I couldn’t see the board.
I must have held that moment against him for a long time without being aware of it, since I hadn’t really aired this memory until now. My father and I weren’t very close until much later in my life, when I let things like that from my childhood go.
After my father died, I found out from my mother that it wasn’t until late in their marriage that he began to share some stories of his time as an adolescent during high school years in Los Angeles, when his family was moving a lot and he didn’t know anyone. He was painfully shy and those years were really hard for him.
He probably would have understood what I was going through back then, if I’d had the courage to tell him. I suffered with loneliness and depression for a long time and went through what in hindsight were unnecessary struggles and stupid decisions as a young adult before I found my way.
I think we expect our parents to know what is right for us even when we don’t tell them anything — hell, I see my 3 year old expecting me to know what he needs when I have not a clue — and we hold it against them when they don’t. My dad would have gladly been there for me if he could, but I didn’t understand that until much later in our relationship. It took getting older and seeing how he kept showing up for me for life events — like getting married, having kids, and so on. He showed up whenever my plane landed when I came to visit, ready to drive me home.
I took things like that for granted for most of my life, until I finally saw it clearly upon his death. I took him for granted.
He always showed up for me, no questions asked, and he would have showed up for my internal struggles, too, if I’d ever shared them with him.
I know my son and daughter will have hard times ahead of them. Discovering yourself and forging your own identity can be hard. I hope I can help my kids through it, and that they won’t hold too much against me for my inevitable misunderstandings.
I am still living, so I don’t want to look it straight in the face. I call it something else to soften it, push it away, cover it up in curlicues.
Call it what it is.
Death.
The loss of everything that seems so important at this moment. Life. Thought. Movement. Gone forever.
Left is a residue of memory. The things said and done trailed uniquely like wrinkles across the lives of those near. The souvenirs of a person.
Life is precious because it is fragile. Stop. Life is half-blind because to spend each moment fully awake would be terror. Look.
Some part of me knows the encroaching darkness, so I fight, I claw for a place away from the world that is dying out there, in the cold, outside the circle of my hearth.
Here, time slows. And I remember: my father is dead. Left are his clothes. His running shoes. All his stuff in the garage. His new car. The stationary bike in the corner he bought 2 weeks before he died. His texts on my phone. His face in my photos.
His love in my heart.
He fought, too. But he was more patient than I am. He was kinder than I will ever be. He chiseled his quiet place in the world over many years.
What can I learn? He helped me to begin to carve out my own place for my family.
I will place his picture over my heart. And continue to live, half-awake, sometimes remembering what will be left.
I’ve been mourning the loss of my father over the last week, and going through what are probably normal phases of grief — shock, feeling like I was punched in the gut throughout the day and breaking down sobbing, self-recrimination, anger, etc. . . but there has been one feeling that has been present throughout my grief that has expanded to subsume all the others: gratitude.
I’m grateful that COVID be damned, when I found out my father had stage 4 cancer, I booked a flight and a hotel and went out to see him with my kids. We visited him in his backyard, wearing masks the entire time. This wasn’t an easy decision due to the pandemic, and I was petrified the entire time, but both he and I knew it was the right thing to do. And I am so glad I did.
I’m grateful that I was able to speak to him on the phone one last time, and that the final words I heard from him were, “I love you.” He died a few hours after we spoke.
I’m grateful that I had a father who was present from day one for me, who offered his steadfast support for every moment in my life when I needed him — and who never asked for anything in return.
I’m grateful that my father and my mother were together for 50 years and provided me with a model of a strong and steady relationship.
I’m grateful that I have colleagues at work who understood my situation and took work off my plate so I could be with my father without stressing out. And who have continued to support me while I have been grieving so I can heal.
I’m grateful to have a father who showed up for all his kids in all the ways that mattered, who provided for his family with hard work, and who modeled a healthy lifestyle and positive habits.
I’m grateful that my father died quickly and without great pain.
I’m grateful that although my father was reserved and I didn’t know him well as a child or as a young adult, our relationship grew stronger and closer over the last several years. All the things I didn’t see or appreciate when I was young have became more clear to me, especially as I became a father myself. My father may not have been everything I wanted him to be, but he has been everything I’ve needed him to be.
While grieving my father hurts and I feel his loss greatly, I also feel gratitude that we parted in peace and with love. I can only imagine how much it must hurt to lose someone when they leave you with things left unresolved. While his death was sudden, and tragic because he had so many years left ahead of him that my children and his other grandchildren could have enjoyed with him, my father has left me only with profound love and respect.
My sorrow is that I can not spend more time with him. But I will carry his memory with me in everything I do, and seek to honor him in the love I provide to my own children.
I keep finding myself, every time I open up a new tab, scanning for its familiar blue icon so I can click in to see if I have any notifications. I rarely would even look through the feed. I would just take this quick glance (since I didn’t have it on my phone and didn’t receive notifications), and then close it (unless there was a post right up at the top that caught my eye), multiple times throughout the day, probably multiple times throughout an hour — who knows how many? I wasn’t keeping track, but I can now continually feel the urge now in its absence.
So I feel a sense of loss, but a loss in the sense of losing a habit, not of losing friends. If anything, this has made it clear to me just how damaging Facebook had become for me, the burden it was taking on my attention, but more importantly, the fact that I wasn’t gaining many deeper connections with friends. Facebook gave me the illusion that I was sustaining connections to people through narcissistic posts of what I conceived of as my best self or voyeuristic scans of others’ best (or worst) selves.
Because of this illusion, I no longer felt the need to reach out directly to friends anymore. I’ve never been much of a phone person to begin with, and texting isn’t really my thing, but I’ve already reached out to more people in the last few days than I have in a very long time. Which was like, two people, but hey.
It’s funny to remember: I once lived in a cabin on a lake in the mountains near a wilderness area where there was very poor reception. I had a basic cellphone perched on the top corner of a wardrobe, and if the wind blew just right, I would sometimes get one bar, enough to give a short call to someone. Otherwise, I’d have to walk up to the main lodge and call on a landline.
I think I was more in touch with family and friends at that point in my life than ever since.
Since moving to NYC–which was what? 12 years ago now?–my life has been commuting and work and now my 2 kids. My friends have been primarily work friends–people who I see when I work, or only after work to discuss work. Now that my work has become my life’s mission, that’s not entirely a bad thing, but there’s a deep-seated loneliness that creeps around the edges, a loneliness that used to drive me to writing, to this here space on this here blog, but that these days has gone all too often unvoiced, lurking and growing instead more elemental.
I’m hoping the fact that I no longer have the efficient and easy outlet of Facebook as a cheap pretense to connection I might end up writing a little more. And yes, perhaps a blog is only a slightly less cheap pretense to connection, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Even if it means there’s a long silence at the other end, devoid of accumulating likes.
When I first started writing regularly for people other than myself 20 something years ago, which was just an immediate circle of friends, I would email random daily musings to them. It was performative and desperate and eager and free-flowing, and it became the definitive mode and method of my creative writing. Those emails morphed into blogs, once I realized not everyone wants to have their inboxes flooded with my precious randomness. And here I still am. Sort of. Sometimes.
My writing of this sort has tapered off over the last decade or so, in correlation with the shift from West Coast rumination to East Coast intensity. I began writing about my work, which became my life. And that branched off into another blog, Schools & Ecosystems. This internal realm that I once uncorked nearly daily fell dormant. The farther in time it has receded, the harder it has become to return to that space of sort-of fecund mostly monastic aching incantation.
A parallel shift has been the fall away of closer friends from my orbit, as friends became replaced with work acquaintances. With kids + work, friendship is about the farthest thing from both my ability and interest to consider.
So that original audience I once wrote to and for has become replaced by some amorphous void of whatever random stranger may happen across a post.
Not to devalue your current attention, dear reader, but I don’t know who I am writing for anymore.
I’m trying to think this through here.
Maybe it has always ultimately been for myself. After all, I am the only one paying the closest attention. Like a documentation of a self that I only know is there through the reading and writing of it. I go back and review what I’ve written to remind myself. Yes, I am still there. I write, and remind myself. Yes, I am still here. The only way I can maintain that deeper self, that reflective self that breaks beyond the shallowness of a day, is to string together the sentences that I post to myself as a pathway.
There’s narcissism there, surely, but only insofar as I write to make myself look good. Facebook and Instagram are the far more innately narcissistic mediums, though I suppose blogs could be seen as the progenitor.
Isn’t writing really about chiseling down to a truth, however fragmented and momentary? Does it even require an audience to achieve such purpose?
I post this into the void to redeem a fragment of myself.
I was speaking with an old friend who called out of the blue yesterday, and she spoke to my soul about how the thing we all need the most right now, in this time of pandemic and uncertainty and confinement, are words. Written words, reflective words, words that move us beyond the veneer into a meaning that re-centers us. And she is right.
Dammit, brethren, I haven’t written a post on this blog since October 1, 2018! A lot has changed for me since that time of the mouse in that apartment in that neighborhood, and a lot has most certainly changed in the world.
Let me bring it back to first principles. What this blog was meant to be, in its original instantiation, was the haphazard gyrations of a mind struggling to come back to terms with each moment in which it was confronted with a blank screen. This sort of writing has been what has kept me alive for a good portion of my young adult life. I needed it, like I needed the used CDs at Rhino Records and live music every week.
I don’t see live music anymore, either. I’ve become a dad of two, a bureaucrat, a co-op owner. People, I write and read education blogs and tweets on the outskirts of my waking time. That’s the kind of person I’ve become.
But I still get excited about a glass of Chartreuse, increasingly rare.
But you want me to say something about this moment of global trepidation we’re in, don’t you. You don’t care about my middle aged haze of contentment. You want soulful depths of edgy reflectiveness that will take you past my own navel.
Let’s give this a shot. The moon hovers pastel and solemn over the balcony railing. Its mountains and valleys I squint to hold in my mind’s eye but can’t. Over the horizon of an earth too big for me to know. Because there’s the next day, and its weather, to consider. An allotment of meetings and things I should do that I don’t really want to do, and some things I’m excited about that I don’t feel I have my own permission to embark on, and there’s always the holes that were ripped in the walls where the children pulled the drapes down and the lights that we need to measure and decide and mull over where to place. Wait.
Wait. There I go again. It’s caught me up. My life. My small life with all its immediate small tasks undone that keep me limited, uncaring and ungrateful for the fragile and beautiful existence I share within this world. The fact that I exist at all, that we exist at all, on this planet, in this time, with the space and means to know it if we so choose, which we don’t.
But that’s not right, either. My life isn’t uncaring or ungrateful—I think nearly every second how full my heart is as I touch my son’s face or stroke my daughter’s hair, how much I love the sound of their laughter, the joy they take in each other, in the presence of their mother and father, in the presence of being awake and alive, so painful at times and fraught with temporary anger but full with feeling.
Deep breath. It’s that I don’t stop to really say it, to myself, to you. I say it in my mind, in my heart. I really do. I love being alive. I love my family, I love looking at the treetops from my balcony, catching a glimpse of the changing light into sunset from my bedroom window, the color of the paints I’ve chosen and applied to the walls and the way they change with the light. Catching my son or daughter’s eye and making them smile. Reading books to them. It makes my heart full, each and every day. In the midst of all the panic, and the exhaustion, and the news.
So yes, the world is fraught right now, and part of me is terrified and angry about the frailness of our world and nation, that we are so easily dominated by greed. And part of me is in awe of how we have been brought to our knees by a tiny spiked virus. But another part of me is in love with the time I have with my family, in this coop in the Bronx where we’ve hammered down our stakes.
Our world has become smaller in this time of the coronavirus pandemic. I will never make light of the loved ones lost, nor of the fear that we have for our loved ones most at risk. But this smallness can help us see the beauty that we have before us, however small, however fleeting, however unimportant to anyone but ourselves and each other.
I don’t think I’ve said it. But I’m rusty, friends. Forgive me. And please write down some words to share with yourself with me.
10 years ago today, my woman and I ventured forth from San Diego to move to NYC, with all our worldly goods crammed in a Budget truck—including my parrot wedged in between us in the cab, screaming his bloody green head off.
I’ve spent most of my life coasting along with the way the wind takes me, and settling down into stagnancy when nothing moves, and now, after many tentative forays and excursions, I’m stepping out on my own, with absolutely nothing in sight but what I make mine. I foresee that for a time things will be pretty difficult in certain terms, such as still living under someone else’s roof, and it’s going to take time to find a new job, and it’s going to take time to get used to a completely new world, etc. But all that just seems exciting to me, because at least it’s a challenge to work that much harder to find my place, as opposed to simply waiting for things to come my way.
Things were indeed pretty difficult at first. But it has been exciting. And I’ve worked hard to find my place here, in this dense city that breaks you down to give you the opportunity to build yourself back up.
Countless hours on subways, buses, and pavement across Queens and the Bronx. Lifting boxes, stocking shelves, writing lessons, grading papers, coordinating IEPs.
And here I am now, married to the same rock-solid woman I set out on this intrepid journey with, with a beautiful son, and a career that I love.
Here’s to the future, and to struggle, and to never settling down into stagnancy.
A somber and sober New Year’s reflection on the increasing cynicism this last year of chaos and conformity has wrought.
Like the rest of you who remain tethered to glowing screens, this year has left me feeling constantly frayed. And like many others, my view of the internet, with its once attendant optimism for the future, has grown increasingly cynical.
I’ve been busy, of course, but peeling away that inevitable excuse, there’s also this to point to for my reticence in writing.
To write, to really write, is to break momentarily free from all that has come before to forge a pathway into the heart of darkness. To rediscover and lay bare the ancient byways that were already there.
But really, we — I — should have known better. Nothing is ever truly proffered for free. Every time we log into a browser, tap into an app, and affix our gaze onto a screen, our every click and swipe and clack of a key is harvested and mined for every last life drop of data. As William S. Burroughs, a professional junkie who would know, once said:
Beware of whores who say they don’t want money. The hell they don’t. What they mean is that they want more money; much more.
It all seems so banal, at first. But what a Faustian bargain it is. We grow not only reliant upon these ephemeral feeds, but addicted. The declension from creator to consumer occurs so subtly that we can almost convince ourselves that we are still creative gods as we color in prescribed, personalized templates administered to us in a drip line from the inner algorithms of a Forbidden City.
Those who control the data, who can mine them for patterns that will narrow the probabilistic outcomes for any given successive moments of time, grow stronger with every reinvestment of attention that we bestow within their encircled domains.
Yet here I am, freely spilling my branded pixels forth onto this particular platform which will be willingly disseminated via instant post grams in the hope that it may gain a stranger’s fleeting approval. So I keep clicking, and feeding, and posturing.
I — we — must still hope for something redemptive. Some Neo love Jesus transmutation that will imbue the raw bestiality of humanity with some kind of higher purpose and meaning.
But I know, we know, you know
that the greatest of power and riches lies within.
However trite, this is a diamond truth forged by star song. So long as this is kept just beyond immediate attention, we fumble in bonds.
Let 2018 be the year in which you and I and we dig closer to the inner flame for longer periods of time for a greater amount of good.
It’s been so very long since I’ve posted anything of personally substantive meaning. Where have I been? Where has my heart, my soul, my substance been?
One could easily twist that question right back around to the world wherein we live. Our world has been head suckered down to a bright lit screen. Captivated. Harvested of every life drop of data.
But that’s the world.
My heart and soul has meanwhile been loving every minute I get to spend with my son, who is nearing 7 months at this point. He is a delight to be in the presence of. I draw inward to family.
Writing is also in some ways selfish. Spending time with my son takes clear precedence. And then I’m tired at the end of a long day. Yes, I am getting older.
Complacent, though? No, I am always hungry to be better. My focus shifts from work, to music, to reading, to whatever flits in front of me that seems to be fruitful. But I also seem to be more apt to wait before expending energy on something I’m not so sure will pay off.
I’m working on not wasting my time on something if it doesn’t have any potential future payoff. And if we’re honest, this is what the world, minus the 1 percenters, also needs to work on.
It is something magical, to be able to peer inside of your mother’s tummy to see your perfectly forming outline shimmering in sepia.
The technician pressed the little ultrasound knob harder and harder, jiggling it around impatiently atop you, to try and get you to turn, as if she were trying to entice a fish, but you shrank away into the depths, as if you knew you were being looked at. She slowly took the measure of each and every one of your bones, and we could see your little feet and hands flailing, lit like candescent bulbs. You liked curling around yourself and kept turned towards your mother’s spine. We could see your brain, the flow of blood through your developing veins. We could see and hear the fluttering of your heart, still split into halves. The technician kept making your mother turn from side, to side, and back again, to try and see you in profile.
You were still sort of amphibian, a primeval force swimming in the darkness, your segmented spine twisting like a little stem.
But then, finally, there was your face, already singular, universally human, projected as an image before your mother and father and a weary technician, holding hands in this little room on the 10th floor on the east side of Manhattan.
It struck me then that I too am developing, shedding my vestigial self-involvement to become a father. I will be your father. This is no longer a thought, a hope, a fear. This is what will be. My soul grows towards the moment when I will see your face in the light of the sun, and hold you and speak to you and call your name.
Goodbye to 2015, a year which seems, Janus-like, to present opposing faces as I look back on it.
Navel gazing advisory: the following is entirely personal and most likely of no great interest to you, dear reader, so consider yourself duly warned and advised. I write this, selfishly, for my own exorcism, and share it here because that’s what this blog is, for better or for worse—a selfish undertaking, with some obscure, vague hopes of selflessness imputed somewhere in the offing. A mundane and transparent and unscientific bloodletting, with some already lost dream of connection underlying the catharsis.
Took me some time to process, but I’ve finally recognized a psychological barrier greatly weighing me down at the close of this year. Two thousand fifteen. Overall, the year has been quite good. Quite excellent. But something occurred at the outset of this school year (September, for you non-public-school folks) that entirely sapped my mojo. I’ve avoided talking about it, or even fully grappling emotionally and mentally with it, because it never has had full closure. So now this, disclosure.
I was offered a position, in a very untimely manner, to a district-level role that would have not only significantly bumped up my salary*, but provided me an opportunity to utilize the skills and knowledge I’ve gained in my experience in education thus far, and see how I can share and apply them across hundreds of different schools. I was quite excited about the new role, but it unfortunately was offered at an extremely inopportune time—i.e. 2 weeks before the start of the new school year. I did everything I could to make it happen, including arranging as many interviews, phone and in person, that I could, attending hiring fairs, sending out emails to everyone within my professional network, sending out email blasts to listservs, emailing professors at graduate programs, and so on. And the really frustrating thing is that I had the full support of many others in my efforts.
Essentially, in order for me to take the position, I had to arrange for my own replacement. While there is much talk of teacher shortages, especially in special education, here in NYC it did not apply at the time that I was looking. Those few I was able to interview were either too unskilled, lacking proper certification, or were entirely incompetent (i.e. didn’t have the skills to email properly or even arrange for an interview), for the type of school and role we were seeking. I wasn’t merely looking for a warm body—this is a great position and school to work at.
I will abstain from detailing the interviews that did occur. I can regale you with them over crumpets and tea some time one-on-one, if you’re interested.
So once the school year commenced, and it was clear there was no amazing teacher waiting somewhere hidden in the wings, I washed my hands of the matter and got back to my work—or so I thought. Internally, I was sorely chafed, and it has been a rough transition, emotionally speaking, for me to get my head screwed back on straight. I’m not exactly someone attuned to my emotions — it took me 4 months to get to this current point of awareness, to the point of being able to talk somewhat honestly about it. With unnecessary rhetorical flourishes, of course. Partially, I think, because the position has still been (hypothetically) there for me, in the case I was able to find a replacement, so a part of me kept looking and hoping.
This has been damaging to my motivation and well-being.
So as I look back at 2015, even though the year up until that point had been quite fantastic, really—a busy and productive close to the prior school year (obtained my School Building Leader license), a wonderful and invigorating trip to Ireland and Scotland, and an energizing bit of additional work to close out the summer with an online curriculum company and a geeky study of NYC education history with a nonprofit—I was left with this very negative feeling in the dusty corners of my being. And that’s ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous, and petty, and insufferable. Which is probably why I’ve refused to fully look upon it, in all its puny, grotesque, childish glory.
This has made me recognize a damaging hubris of my character. I apparently feel this compelling need to justify my existence via a feeling of progress which is gained through the recognition of others. How superficial! But that’s how I am. And so I shut down when this opportunity didn’t pan out the way I hoped it would. I stopped writing articles. I turned down (or simply ignored) opportunities outside of my current school work. And I’ve been just a wee bit depressed, really. As I’ve mentioned before, there’s probably other elements involved, like existential notes of loneliness and getting older, but this may be the underlying factor that really squeezed me behind the gills.
So, taking a deep breath, looking at it honestly, and putting a fork in it. And forcing myself to open my eyes to just how incredibly fortunate and lucky I am to have what I have. To live in an apartment next to two beautiful parks here in upper Manhattan. To work in a great school with a professional and hardworking staff and wonderful students and families. To share this existence with my beautiful, hardworking, loving wife, who has been undergoing her own trials and tribulations to finish out an incredibly difficult nursing program (only one semester left!!!). And to come home every day to four vibrant birds (we took on two additional parakeets), who fill our apartment with endless chatter and color and life. To be in good health. To be part of two very different, yet complementary, families, both my wife’s, and my own.
That’s why there is shame involved here, to even be putting this out there. Shame in looking at this and articulating this out loud. Because there’s absolutely no good reason to be feeling this way. But there it is.
So, exorcised.
2016 stands untrammeled before us. Let’s do this right, people. Let’s do this honestly, and embracingly, and joyously. Happy new year.
*An aside on salary: (why do I feel the need to justify this? Why can’t we talk honestly about the importance of salary? This is NYC! Perhaps because I recognize that no matter how much I might pretend to be dancing around that thin red line, I can see all around us so many more in much more dire straights? Yes. That’s probably it.)
It’s been a while since I’ve scribed anything of any sort over the last god-knows-how-long. I wonder sometimes if I’m experiencing the addictive satiation of social media that everyone with a smartphone seems to be so haply skewered by, whether it’s reducing my cognitive and spiritual capacity. As of late, I feel often unfocused, tired, and unwilling to engage in much beyond the reading of newsfeeds, science and education articles, because there’s always something critically important just beyond the next scroll downward.
Perhaps I’m simply getting older. It’s harder to get myself out the door for a run (it is “winter,” if you can call what NYC has been experiencing thus far as such, but still). It is harder to feel compelled to respond to emails from anyone asking for my time and energy for things that don’t relate to what I need to get done tomorrow. Or maybe I’m just simply depressed.
Full disclosure: last month I discovered myself standing in the middle of my living room weeping, not entirely certain why. When I examined the blubbering’s antecedent, I had just gotten off the phone to my parents. So I guess I realized just how much I miss my family, way out there on the West Coast. I’m not a sentimental sort of person, so this was surprising to me, this missing of family.
And maybe I just felt overwhelmed and stressed at work, because Novembers in any school year are always hard.
Or maybe I was just feeling old. I’m nearing what statistically speaking could be determined as the median of my life’s parabola.
Perhaps it was also that I realized, 8 years into living in NYC, that I’m lonely. I know people, but I don’t know people. Hell, I don’t know myself anymore.
All of those things.
So I’m growing a beard. The un-manicured kind. It now feels like a ginger mat of fur splayed out my chin, which is fun to rub.
I furthermore obtained a set of tabla drums, and assuming I can force myself to haul them downtown on a Thursday night, I’ll begin taking lessons. I’ve decided that my brain has been getting too set into narrow ways, and I need to wire some new connections.
Teaching is certainly a rewarding profession, but I’m missing having any sense of self or capacity that extends beyond the work that I do. Which brings me back to this.
Writing.
The toughest damn thing in the world.
If it was easy, I would have written that book I was supposed to write 4 years ago already. Writing a blog post that nobody ever reads is hard enough as it is.
I know enough not to make myself any promises, but it’s clear that when I fail to write regularly, I lose an essential connection to myself. It is through this mundane connection that I no longer feel alone.
Here’s to continued future scribblings of the soul.
I’ve decided I will no longer apologize–neither to myself nor to my anonymous audience here–for failing to write on this blog. Part of getting older entails sacrifices and necessary shifts from idealisms of youth and hobbies once held sacred. Writing for most of my burgeoning life has been a method for me to cogitate and develop independence of thought, but most importantly, to relieve myself of loneliness and give voice to an inner life long held silent.
But now I am married and professionally immersed. Though I don’t have many close friends in NYC since I moved here five years ago, I don’t generally have time to feel lonely. I continue to develop and refine my philosophies, but that development now either takes place amongst discussion with colleagues at my school, at education conferences or events, or on my professional blog, Schools as Ecosystems.
So while I do miss the personal and introverted creative explorations/exorcisms I once performed regularly here on this blog, I won’t allow myself to be burdened by guilt that I am compromising some essential aspect of my existence. The reality is that I am developing in other ways, and such is as it should be, because it must be, and it will be.
I’ve sustained an injury that has prevented me from running most of this summer, and in some ways, the story of that injury serves as an adept allegory for larger issues ongoing in my life.
First, for those of you (i.e. ALL of you) who haven’t been following this blog since 2005[1], I’m a runner. Not a marathon running-check-my-heart-rate[2]
kind of runner, just someone who runs. Because it brings joy and fosters well-being. I don’t run far, but I run fast, and I like running alone and somewhere peaceful, like by the water or in the woods.
I had major shin splints in high school while running track and cross-country, and discovered (thanks to a well-informed employee at my local shoe store) that I was over-pronating, so I got a shoe that fixed me right up and has served me well in the 15 or so years since, such that I haven’t ever sustained ANY injuries until now. Pretty amazing for a runner, apparently. That shoe is the Brooks Adrenaline GTS, and I highly recommend it if you are a runner and require more support in a shoe.
Two years ago, I got swept up in the barefoot running craze, as I have documented on this here blog, and shucked my ample GTS cushioning for the unsupportive, callous inducing barefoot lifestyle of running. Not completely barefoot, mind you — I’ve been running in Vibram FiveFingers. It was rough at first–it took me a whole summer to adapt– but once I broke in my feet and adjusted my form, I fell in love. Not only does barefoot running appeal to my philosophical biases for self-sufficiency and natural principles, but it also just feels really good, as it seems to better stretch and work out your feet and legs during a run.
The injury that has reared its evil head is a muscle strain in my right leg, which tells me that something has been wrong for some time in the way my right foot has been striking the ground. The symptoms are inflammation right under my kneecap and–especially–on point of my hip. When this started up, I first tried to run through it, but it only got worse. So then I gave in to the inevitable and stopped running to see if some R&R would make it go away.
It didn’t. I tried running after a break of 2 weeks and it flared right back up, as if it had never subsided. The frustrating part about this is that the summer is the one time during the year that I can finally run consistently almost every day and get myself back into shape. What happens when I don’t run? Beers go straight to my belly. It’s disconcerting how quickly my gut begins to protrude. Now, yes, I COULD go to a gym, but that goes against my aforementioned philosophical bias for self-sufficiency. Plus, I just think they are nasty and don’t want to be around a bunch of stinky strangers when I work out.
So my belly has been slowly distending as I’ve been waiting, fruitlessly, for my injury to subside. I finally realized that I had to do something about it. But I’m wary of doctors, and I’m skeptical of the ability of a doctor to tell me much that I don’t already know. I decided that I would find a good deep tissue massage therapist, instead. I like getting deep tissue massages, and I get them for myself as a treat once a year or once every 2 years, depending on my budget. I see it as a necessary “defragmenting” of my body, a way to purge built up tensions and knots that accumulate over time. But I’ve never gone specifically to a masseuse for the purpose of physical therapy for an injury, so I wanted to make sure I got one who was decent.
I found one via a quick Google Maps search for “deep tissue massage,” and after checking out her website and seeing that Trey Anastasio had given her a positive review, I figured she must be aight. She was. She pinpointed some major knots in my back I wasn’t even cognizant were there, as well as introduced me to the incredible pain that is the IT band massage.
She informed me that as an active person, I should really be getting a massage more frequently. When I delicately let her know that I can’t afford such luxuries, she charitably gave me an insider tip about using a “foam roller” to give self-massages[3].
I don’t know about you, but I’d never heard of these things (probably cuz I’ve never gone to the gym). Given my proclivity for self-sufficiency, it certainly seemed right up my alley, so I went ahead and ordered me one. They’re cheap.
I’ve started using it, and let me tell you, rolling around on your IT band is no joke. It’s incredibly painful[4]. It brings tears to my eyes. But it’s made it fairly apparent to me that my right IT band must be getting strained and perhaps at the heart of my injury, because there is major pain all along it. I’m thinking that if I continue to iron it out, it should do much to alleviate the strain keeping me from running.
So I ordered me a new pair of Brooks Adrenaline GTS 12. I’m not giving up on barefoot running completely, nor do I blame it for the injury, though I think it played its part (I’ll get more into that in a moment). I plan on easing back into running with daily foam rolling as physical therapy, and the increased cushioning of my running shoes to help to ease the strain. Once I’ve gotten back into rhythm, I want to go back to my Vibrams, though I might never go back to full-time barefooting. I’ll see how it plays out. All I care about, at the end of the day, is that I’m running.
What are the causes of the injury? Is barefoot running to blame?
There’s a number of factors that could have played into it. They are as follows:
During the school year, I run more and more inconsistently as the year progresses, due both the shortened days and coldness of winter, and because of an increasing exhaustion. Teaching special education in the South Bronx, in case you didn’t know, is demanding work
When I did go out for a run, I was most likely going out harder than I should have, given the time that might have elapsed since the last run
I wore old dress shoes with heels to work intermittently, and I had a bit of a walk from the train station. I generally tried to wear a barefoot style shoe that I have, but they look kinda funny, so when I wanted to look good for whatever reason, or if there was ice on the ground, I wore my dress shoes
I am getting older. I know 33 isn’t that old, but I ain’t no spring chicken anymore, neither. I may not be able to get away with the same level of body stress I once could
A few months ago, I sliced open my big toe on my right foot, had to get 7 stitches, and apparently severed some kind of nerve, because I can no longer bend the toe completely, which may have subtly altered my running form
I think either my legs are different lengths, or my hips are askew[5]
Any or all of these factors, combined with the reduced support of barefooting, could have easily resulted in the strain that I have incurred.
Well, OK, so now that I’ve thoroughly bored you with the details of my diagnosis, how does any of this serve as an allegory for other life issues, as I suggested at the outset of this post?
Basically, it has to do with the principles of myofascial release that I’ve learned from my massage therapist and from foam rolling. When you hit a point of stress, you press on it until it relaxes, then you iron it out through the length of the muscle, kind of like rolling out dough. It’s akin to exorcism. By calling out the point of stress that had been hitherto unnamed and stepped daintily around, you then force it to abandon its temporary abode. The longer that you’ve ignored this encroaching negative spirit, the more painful it is to dispel.
How apropo this concept is to our emotional lives, is it not? In terms of my own life, I’ve been under a lot of stress. This year in my job was easier in some ways, but harder in others. This is something I’m still trying to work through and write about. And I’ve been letting many of my feelings remain unvoiced. And over time, those feelings began to get knotted, and embedded, and tangled, and then began to seep into and infect other areas of my life, such that eventually all I knew was that I felt tired, unsuccessful, unsensual, unmotivated, and uncentered.
This dim feeling and lethargy has pervaded even my summer, and in this way, my injury serves as its allegory. As if the strain in my leg embodied the strain in my heart. I had gotten to a point where I felt as if I could no longer write, no longer run; in short, I had lost my mojo. This wasn’t any form of overt depression, by the way. It was more like something that lurked behind every day, but was easily subsumed behind the hustle and bustle of my busy mind and life. In this way, it gathered. It gathered, and I ignored it. This is how storms gather in our bodies and in our hearts.
And so the allegory of this injury is the allegory of an emotional life. We must go to our points of pain, and we must lay them bare, push them down until they run. And that alone is not enough. We must then pursue them, all the way down along the path from which they’ve mounted, until we have pushed them out, evicted them, banished them. But we must be ever vigilant, for each new day brings new barbs of tension, and the longer we ignore them and wish them away and pretend, the deeper they embed themselves. Until we find ourselves, one day, in that place of hopeless despair, and must reach for help from another, and others reach down their hands to us and help us back to our feet, and then inform us, gently, that the path to healing is our own, and we must go back to that place of darkness alone, but here is a gift of knowledge to support you on your journey.
Here, this is my gift. Thank you for following me thus far.
2 I did purchase a heart rate monitor recently, but I’ll post more on that later
3 Just as a side note, now that I’ve found her, I will certainly go back to her when I am able to afford it. I highly recommend her if you’re in NYC.
4 Painful doesn’t quite do this feeling justice. It’s not quite pain, so much as being extremely uncomfortable and wanting it to stop. It reminds me of the feeling of sitting in an ice bath up to your hips. Our gym at my high school had a giant ice bath, and after a few minutes, right before you go numb, the same feeling of burning discomfit hits you. You have to force yourself to stay in until it goes away.
5 Interestingly, I haven’t really thought about it until now, but when I was younger, I ran to jump over a tennis court net, and my foot got caught in it, so I landed right on my hip. I was too embarrassed to tell my parents about it, and though it hurt for a while afterwards, eventually it went away. That’s the exact hip that is hurting now. Possible I may have fucked it up that long ago and it just showed up now after moving to unsupportive shoes.
Reflections on the year entire and milestones reached, and a special goal for the oncoming year shared.
It’s the end of another year, and rather than compile a numbered list of the best of 2011 or make predictions about the year to come, I’d like simply to reflect on what this year has been, and ruminate on what my goals might be for the oncoming year.
My sense of this year–in the traditional sense of a year–is somewhat skewed, since January through June was still “last year” as far as school life is concerned, and that last school year was vastly different than my current school year. So I’ll start there. For that stray, wonderful soul out there that already knows this information, just skim over it.
I am now in my third school year of teaching special education at an elementary school in the Bronx. My first two years, I was in a self-contained setting, which meant that I was the sole teacher with the assistance of a paraprofessional in a classroom of up to 12 kids (I think my first year I had 9, then last year I had 8, so I guess I was fortunate in that sense; though something you quickly learn in special education is not to gauge solely by numbers) some of whom were undergoing acute emotional or psychological stress or dealing with early childhood trauma. So at the beginning of this year, 2011, I was struggling with meeting the needs of my second class of students. Compared to my 1st year, these students were collectively less aggressive and they were generally a pleasure to be with, though we certainly had some rough days. I had two very challenging students in the emotional sense, though they all presented great challenges in the academic and social needs sense. Some refused to do any work at all, and some worked very hard, yet demonstrated little progress.
I obtained my master’s degree in June from The City College of New York. Not really an accomplishment in and of itself, but an accomplishment in the sense that I was taking those classes on top of the already plentifully demanding work as a full time teacher in a high needs school. So that’s my first personal milestone of 2011.
My second personal milestone is that during the summer, I got married to a wonderful broad from New York City who crossed my star out in Lake Tahoe 5 years ago, and who ended up lugging me out here to the East Coast. We were fortunate enough to get the chance (thanks to my parents) to honeymoon in Kauai. Truly a marvelous cap to a challenging 3 years since moving out here to NYC.
Then I commenced my 3rd year teaching. In all respects, it’s been something of a honeymoon there, too. I was shifted from a self-contained setting to an inclusion setting, where I now am a co-teacher in a mixed classroom of 19 special education and general education students. These students might be far behind academically speaking, but they do not have the kind of aggressive behaviors I was dealing with prior. I have not been assaulted, and they only rarely get into verbal tiffs with each other. They are truly sweet, lovely children to be around (though they can’t stop talking), and I know I am lucky this year and I try to cherish it as much as I can while in the thick of things.
Working with another teacher presents its own set of challenges, but it provides a relief from administrative burdens. I’m not good at communicating with parents on the phone, and she’s great at it. She helps plan lessons and grade assignments. I also learn from my co-teacher and appreciate the perspective she brings to our classroom, given that she grew up in the same neighborhood as our students and can tap into that experience to connect with them. We have lunch together and I learn just from listening to her crazy stories. All in all, I get the impression that the South Bronx today–though it certainly isn’t topping any Yahoo lists of best places to live–ain’t nothing like it used to be.
My third personal milestone this year was that I turned 33. Nothing special in particular about that, except that 3 is my lucky number. Hoo-rah!
But now it’s a new year (almost), and I know that I am not the best educator nor person that I can be. I feel like I’ve reached some sort of plateau, in which I am in danger of falling into complacency. If I am not challenging myself, nor being challenged, then I question my purpose, my identity, my integrity.
So I enter the new year with some trepidation, but also with the firm resolve to do better. Better for my wife, better for my students, and better for myself. I’m not going to burden you with a laundry list of my personal or professional goals, which I’ve already done plenty enough of throughout this year, but there is one goal that I would like to share with you:
This year, I am going to write a book. You heard it here first.
As of Saturday, I am forthwith a married man. My wife and I have been living together for 5 years, so married life will not be substantially different for us, but I admit that walking around with a ring on my finger does make me feel different. More confident, perhaps, more adult. (We’ll see just how long a feeling imbued by a material object lasts!)
I’ve always loved weddings, because they seem to be one of the few venues where people of all walks of life and ages can come together and celebrate. I am pleased to say that my own wedding was a beautiful celebration, and I am not saying that just because I’m biased. I’ve never seen my parents dance so hard. My nieces and nephews were running around and having a blast and being adorable. My wife and I have incredible friends and family, and they were the ones that made this experience so wonderful. If there’s only one thing I regret about my wedding, it was being unable to spend lots of time with each and every one of them there.
As we were planning the wedding and grimacing over the money spent and the inevitable stress of event planning, I began wishing that we’d just eloped and been done with it all. But now that the wedding has finally occurred, I can say honestly that it was all worth it, no matter how quickly it swept by. It was worth it because it served as a critical reminder of just how fortunate and blessed we are to have our family and friends. Without them, we would be unable to cherish and sustain our commitment to each other over the long haul.
Relationships aren’t magic — they require a lot of hard work, dedication, and compromise. We move into our marriage with full awareness of what real love requires, and with the models and sustenance of our parents and our families and our friends to look to for guidance.
We’ll be going to Kauai for our honeymoon next week. I know I’ve been delinquent in posting here since summer has began, but I think I’ve got a good excuse for it! ;) Keep your eyes peeled for more junk on public education later.
I finished my last graduate courses on Tuesday. As I walked to the train talking with a colleague who had begun the Fellows program at the same time as me, he remarked on how different we had become since that first summer during our initial training before entering the classroom. How innocent we were then! Teaching changes you, indelibly. I remember how on top of the world I felt at that time, even as I knew the challenges that awaited me. I had been a manager at a demanding and innovative grocery retailer and was physically fit, accustomed to breaking down pallets of heavy groceries, dealing with crazy customers, and working on one full meal a day with 4-6 hours of sleep and a 1 1/2 hour to 2 hour commute each way on what was generally a middle of the night series of subway trains. Yes! I finally had adapted to NYC after a recent move from Lake Tahoe and felt I was ready to tackle anything. Phew. Folks. What hubris, what folly.
See, the thing is that teaching takes much more than simple ambition, physical drive, stamina, and dedication. It takes deep internal spiritual and emotional wellsprings to maintain composure and constancy. Every facet of your being will be challenged, every hidden assumption, every underlying prejudice, every underdeveloped part of your psyche and soul, every trigger of anger or annoyance will be released and exposed and prodded and overturned. You will be scraped hollow. You will be on the verge of mental breakdowns–or actually have them, depending on your level of mental stability. You will nearly break into tears–or actually break into tears, depending on your level of stoicism–in front of other adults or students. Oh yes. Teaching changes you.
And there will be days when you wonder, given how close to the breaking point you can come, just at what point a human mind becomes broken and can no longer be made whole again. And at the verge of this question is a rift of despair and anguish so deep that you can’t really quite go there–you have to wall off the reality of the lives of your students from your own life in order to protect your own emotional and mental well-being. Your students. Some of them living lives so unfathomable that you have to build a wall of professionalism in order to protect yourself. Or risk craziness, despair. Breaking down into tears at the mere mention of their name. Because it’s not about you. It’s about them. It’s always about them. And even during the most challenging moments of confrontation, even during the worst days of acting out behavior, you know that this is all about serving them. About becoming a better person so that you can better serve them. Becoming a better teacher so that you can negotiate the land mine pathways of the heart and mind and guide them there by proxy.
Anyone who thinks that they can step into the midst of this situation and create a revolution will not survive. Idealism has little place in the day-to-day marathon battle of seeking to transform the very soil that these children are rooted within, confined within. Only steady, patient, nurturing, every day, constant, consistent, repeated love–love–love. Tough love. Real love. Love that does not accept mediocrity. Love that does not accept falsehood. Love that does not accept anything except the best from your beloved. Because you know that’s what they really are. The best. No matter what they tell themselves. No matter how much they try to show you the worst in them (and they will–it’s a child’s way of testing your commitment). Every day. The best. Only the best. The best in you. The best in them. Even when neither of you have it in you. You come the next day to try again.
Until one day, there is a moment when you look around you, into their eyes, into their hearts, and you feel it. You can feel it. Again, you almost begin crying, but this time, for another reason. It’s love. It’s real. And it is changing you. And if it is changing you, it must be, it must be changing your students, too. This is what you came here to do. And that is the only thing that can keep you going. That hope. That wish. That love.
Well, I’ve hit the big 3-2! I don’t feel old at all. I’m tired, but that’s just cuz I work my ass off. I’m pretty healthy (excepting the secret cancer I’m convinced is invisibly eating away at my soul), since I’ve kept any vices I’ve had so far in check. For example, I once became somewhat enamoured with cigarettes (Kamel Red Lights) when I was in college, really just because it was something to do at parties, but I would always get to this point where one day they would suddenly taste incredibly disgusting, and I would quit for a few weeks before I started up again (due to the desperate need to keep myself looking occupied even when having nothing interesting to say). This kept me from ever getting dependent on them. This is how it’s been for most things in my life. Before I ever become dependent on something, I have some innate need to reject it and switch things up.
The only thing I’ve become dependent upon is my fiancee. She is there for me, doing all kinds of things to ensure that I am on track physically and mentally, such that she really knows me better than I know myself in some ways. I’m notoriously absent minded, so she helps me take care of some of the things I need to take care of (God, I sincerely hope I’m not succumbing to early Alzheimer’s!) only becoming exasperated with me on a bi-daily basis. She puts up with my need to zone out on my computer when I crawl home to escape from the grind of my stressful work life, and she endures my proclivity towards moodiness and reclusiveness. She continually assumes the best in me and keeps trying to engage me in discussions of things I have not the slightest bit of interest in. She cooks amazing meals for me every week, which I happily shovel down my gullet without comment. She sort of endures my neverending supply of gaseous emissions. (But I would like to formally and publicly log the complaint that she steadfastedly refuses to fix me an alcoholic beverage, pack the nargile, or give me a back massage.)
I never would have foreseen myself making my living here in this vast and alien city of New York, not in a million years. But here I am, pushing myself beyond any expectations I would have once set for myself. I was once a shy, introverted, pimply-faced narcissistic simpleton with a tendency to write grandiose and bellicose ramblings. Well, the narcissism, the grandioseness, and the bellicose ramblings still continue, but otherwise this San Diegan native son has made some progress. I’m alright with my age, I’m alright with where I am in life spiritually, mentally, physically, and otherwise. As far as I’m concerned, life just keeps getting better.
My aim is to never get stale, to never be complacent, to always keep growing and pushing myself and developing. The good news is that no one has ever discovered my amazing talent and thus I’ve never become overexposed and drained by stardom and fame. Lucky me! And lucky you, dear reader! I’ll continue to jissom out random blog posts into the night with the absolute guarantee that not many people will ever read them (aside from all the folks that do searches for guns and stumble upon my most famous post of all time, on my grandfather’s gun collection). But that’s what makes people like you and me so special. We’re not verified and vindicated by the status quo. We’re deviant simply by the nature of our anonymity, by the fact that even though we are quite certain that we are geniuses in our own right, we will never be officially sanctioned and recognized and blessed by any archdeacons of societal norms and powers.
On this day, 32 years ago, I managed to get pulled out of my mother’s belly via C-section. Please, don’t congratulate me for this accomplishment. It really didn’t take much effort. Honestly, I should be sending a card and monetary gifts to the doctor that performed that operation, as well as to my mother, of course, for having nurtured and grown me to the point of my individual conception. Thanks mom. I should probably also send a card to the nurse whose face I pissed upon as I was cleansed of birthing blood.
In other words, I didn’t really do much to get to this point of time. I’ve just been coasting along via the pathways of the inevitable, headlong push of gravity, with some intervening forces of human benefaction along the way. Thanks, universe! Thanks, humanity!
Manderson's Bubble 