monoceros blogsOgnuno sta solo sul cuor della terra
trafitto da un raggio di sole:
ed è subito sera.
Everyone stands alone on the heart of the earth
transfixed by a sun ray:
and suddenly it is evening.
~ Salvatore Quasimodo
I have a number of better things to write about (which I will get to in days to come), but today, all I can manage is a post about surviving my first day of CELTA while nursing a bad head cold. This virus has impeccable timing; it arrived on my last restful evening, one which I had hoped to spend reading and not glued to a tissue box and wondering how best to cure a cold. It also gave me a fitful sleep and left me awake at three this morning thinking about two things - my nose and my nerves.
Somehow, I made it through the long, long day, and I got home to eat a meager dinner and tumble into bed a little after. The phone woke me and now I'm downing a few cups of a herbal drink my mom brewed for me. I'd like to get better real soon so I don't appear a sneezing, weepy, snifflely red-nosed human this Thursday when I have my first assessed teaching practice. I don't want to hand out more than a grammar lesson to my new students.
I haven't been ill in a long time; I can't even remember when I was last sick. But I suppose this is training for the exhausting weeks ahead; I'm learning to deal with an illness while on the course. After all, there will be other things to get through during the next ten weeks.
Things I look forward to during the next 70 days:
1. Learning teaching
2. Becoming more confident about teaching language (different from teaching writing)
3. Dancing (I signed up for tango workshops and milongas so I'll have activities to pleasantly exhaust me instead of being exhausted only from the planning and teaching I have to do.)
4. Seeing my brother again
5. Witnessing my brother register his marriage
6. Having friends return from abroad (Mogan's brother is getting married too, so he's coming home and has promised me a slot in his tight social schedule.)
7. Spending time with friends (to keep me sane)
8. Watching "The Dark Knight" and "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army"
9. Celebrating FG's 30th birthday and my mom's 60th and my friend K's, which is on August 23rd, a mere five days before the end of CELTA
10. The end of the CELTA
Hard left, by Robin Hackett
It could be the rustle of leaves in the night, or the heights they often reach, or the stately grace they possess. Any of these things could be what makes trees so special to me. It could be their age, the ages they've lived through, the changes they've endured. It could be the many things they've seen and will see, not forgetting the creatures they've nourished and sheltered and that passed on before them. There are generations of these creatures. Among the multitudes, one of these is me.
"Trees" (excerpt) by W. S. Merwin
I am looking at trees
they may be one of the things I will miss
most from the earth
though many of the ones I have seen
already I cannot remember
and though I seldom embrace the ones I see
and have never been able to speak
with one
I listen to them tenderly
their names have never touched them
they have stood round my sleep
and when it was forbidden to climb them
they have carried me in their branches
I'm almost 30 so it's shocking that I can still feel 17 on some days. Even worse, I might behave like a 17 year-old. Despite my best intentions and reminders (the typical "note-to-self" thoughts), I can't rid myself of this exasperating tendency. For now, anyway.
Not Myself, by John Mayer.
In my youth, whenever I was particularly tired, my fatigue manifested in a propensity to laugh too much and say bizarre things that I didn't always understand. In short, if I was tired, I appeared tipsy. Today, I've lost the ability to laugh when I get tired. Instead, I just spout strange statements that I still don't understand. In addition, I've noticed a mis-use of vocabulary and also a higher chance of saying things without thinking, which alternates with a moody silence. I'm not sure which of these is the worst.
Sleepdriving, by Grand Archives.
Because I don't listen only to sad music (despite what music selections on this blog suggest), and because it's Friday.
Friday I'm In Love, by The Cure.
Last night, as I was working on the computer, the French doors leading up to the roof were thrown open by the wind. I started. It was a strong one, coming suddenly upon the night, and at once, I realized I could hear the trees very clearly. The storm hadn't arrived, so I went outside, up to the roof where everything seemed bathed in a pale red glow. I could see the huge cloud covering nearly the entire sky, and the silhouettes of trees around me moving about like frenzied shadow puppets. I watched a cyclist hurry home. I let the wind ruffle my skirt, let it chill my skin, and I shivered for the first time in a long while. When was the last time I could say I shivered in Singapore?
I stood there for a long time, thrilling in the anticipation of rain, feeling alone yet connected to all that surrounded me. I thought about many things, and didn't know how long it was before I went back inside. Finally the rain shattered the wind's presence, and thrummed loudly against my windows. I pushed open one and leaned out a little, letting a fine layer or rain cover my face. The wind swept across my skin, and I found it soothing, renewing. Along the road, a young man and woman straggled towards their houses, without umbrellas or raincoats. Across the street, a neighbor smoked a cigarette, then pulled out a large blue umbrella and walked towards the gate. Perhaps he was going for a walk in the storm, something I wanted to do but couldn't, because I had work.
By the time I went to bed, the rain had ceased and the air had preserved the coolness left by the rain. Settling in for the night, I read a few pages of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind and then fell asleep.
This morning, I woke to a threatening gray sky and the familiar sound of a strong wind. My heart leapt.
I began to work again. Today it was housekeeping in the rooms and hallways of my computer. I dug up old files, trying to decide which to delete. "Quotes," said one, and I opened it up. Song titles, proverbs, passages from beloved novels, and then this -
"Books anchor me each day, or, to switch analogies, they suspend me in a protective sac from the world. Good music - a melancholic song, a vibrant symphony - lasts a few minutes. A home-cooked meal - brimming with color and the scent of spices, olives, and mint leaves - takes me through an evening, and is especially great when shared with friends. Books though, books are journeys, some longer than others; or telescopes that let me see galaxies, strange worlds, their grandeur or terrible beauty; or the misshapen fields of my life, some sitting in the sun, others tucked in twilight; and I could gaze for hours, days, weeks."
It was attributed to no one. The lines seemed new and familiar at once. Who had written them? And then I remembered. The writer was me. They came from a time I hadn't recalled in a while. I'd written them and then left them to linger forgotten in a file I hadn't opened in years. Reading the lines again, I felt soothed, renewed.