my students rule

Fucking guy jumped into the train today at Pacific/Atlantic. Literally hurled himself into the train and freaked this girl out. It was so crowded at that point I just stared at the guy's back and hated him. He looked out the window, first at the void and then at the Financial District, I stared at his back and hated him. Then I looked at the Financial District too, a bunch of broken shapes and then the signs of Chinatown and the delivery trucks all in a line, dirty white and some with graffiti before going back under the ground.

You're up, you're down, soon you're at Union Square dodging people half-late for first period.

Luckily I don't teach first. Anyway, today I was in a sour mood in the morning because I had the wrong shoes on and I was afraid the snow was destroying them among other things. And I was thinking about how nice it would be to not have to worry about time and then I started thinking about Kirchner, Nolde and Ernst, all the clutter of war and the muddy palettes and how that color was in all the shady streets and I wanted to wander around and think and maybe go look at some art, something I never do these days.

Then all the teachers, looking stressed out, the feeling I get around them that they consider me pretty unprofessional and me trying to look innocuous while the elevator meanders the numbers, always very aware at those moments of my Chucks and t-shirt and trying to think about what I'm supposed to be teaching to avoid thinking about my failure to completely enter adulthood.

Then I got to second period, teased a couple kids, got through the first Reconstruction lesson and really felt the kids were picking it up. Some really good questions, some curiousity but mostly just a sense of aliveness that never feels as real from anywhere else. Fuck, I could care less how inspired these kids are to learn history, look up and down history and most people just cared about eating and not dying horribly, I'm just always impressed by how much fun they make things. Today there were all these balloons and candy and an amazing amount of teasing, huge cards and clumsy first attempts at love which tend to be more charming than what follows. I don't think I tell them enough how much I believe in them, that'll be tomorrow at some point.

I don't want to bring up Cheney shooting some guy in the face and chest, but some guys, everything they touch they fuck up -- Cheney's one of those I think. So I just can't be surprised, meanwhile Scalia is calling people that disagree with him about how widely the Constitution can be interrupted "idiots". Charming, but the mind's mushy and ready for bed...I should sign out...