welcome!
let's begin
the way transformations do,
with questions.
why a blog?
i am by no means the sort inclined to keeping a blog. i'm a sometime technophobe. i'm deeply undisciplined. but most importantly, for roughly the same reasons i'm a poet out of water in a poetry slam. writing has always been - for me - a very private art, a means to express what has not been or cannot be spoken.
at its worst i saw blogging and similar practices as a kind of electronic prostration before a mutually narcissistic audience of people who should possibly have been out running barefoot in the grass instead.
so what am i doing here? at the simplest and deepest level, i wanted a way to share my new experiences with my family - both those i was born with and those who happen to populate my intimate world. teaching is a very personal profession. it needs YOU, & it changes you. after one short, intense week spent immersed in discussion of the theories and realities of urban/human schoolteaching, i am filled with ideas, excitement, impressions, and new & critical knowledge. i am bursting with stories!
but the short and intense first week reminds me that the summer and coming school year will be both physically and emotionally exhausting. in such a state i am sometimes unable to give such stories their due passion, perhaps especially in multiple tellings, and this deprives us both.
this, finally: there are so many incredibly important people i simply do not communicate wih enough. perhaps you might even say that my desire to share this world with you is in its way an act of love.
it's late. i've got to head toward sleep. i missed the sign on the door to the teacher's college that said "Night Owls Need Not Apply." sweet dreams, comrades.
N.B. at this point you're wondering whether i'll use this kind of dense & tortuous language with my kids - and the answer is obviously no (well, maybe sometimes). we all speak not one but many languages, and we possess them each in varying degrees. this is my language of reflection, which sometimes possesses me.
7 comments:
Have nice journey Jojo.
"Why a blog?"
Why not a blog? The blog falls on the just and unjust alike.
I hope it's true what my wife said to me. She said, "Lou, it's the beginning of the great adventure."
[insert further inane ramblings and semi-obscure pop culture references here.]
Congratulations--direction in life is rumored to be a wonderful thing.
oh margeaux, you are beautiful and I think of you daily. good luck, yo - you're gonna need it! our national education has opted to pass off our children on an underfunded, underappreciated, and undereducated group of teachers, alas, alack: I know with your beauty, wit, and vivacity you'll create a beautiful transformation in your part of this system, perhaps beyond - and I look forward to reading about it~
remain in light
Dearest Margeaux,
Well, I am very pleased that I get to start the day knowing that I raised you well: Make love, Smash capitalism.....and in that order!
I am really looking forward to following your journey, both internally and externally......thanks so much for making that opportunity available to all who love you....via your blog.
Wishing you the best of luck....I know you will become one of those exceptional teachers that leaves a lasting impression on those children who need it the most.
warm fuzzy hugs,
mama bird
I look forward to your next adventure and your blog on it, and I hope some of your poetry (but isn't poetry another name for your adventure?) will be posted there.
What an extraordinary feeling to return to this page and find such riches awaiting me. Thank you to everyone for your lovely, generous words. You've each given me strength and hope in abundance.
Gildas, how lovely to know you are listening. In her work on transactional theory Louise Rosenblatt wrote that a literary text is just symbols on a page, and that the literary work, the "poem" as she names it, lies in the event, the interaction between reader and text. In any case, I want poetry to be the thread through all I do. Like the purple ribbon woven around and through a bird's nest my mom and I once discovered on the grass. Both unique and similar, beautiful and necessary.
Mama Bird. I'd amost say that the phrase should be reversed, "smash capitalism, make love" BUT by which I mean we can and should smash capitalism BY MAKING LOVE.
Knowing you all are listening will help keep me accountable to my own ideals, and I'm so grateful for you.
Margeaux, thank you for sharing this. You are a wonderful, gorgeous and brilliant being and I am so glad you are here on the planet. Love, Glory
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