17th and Irving

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

graduation day

I woke up troubled again. Dreams I can't quite remember when I wake up, but dark whatever they are and I'm longing for the desert in a way I haven't in awhile.

The ride up on the subway was peaceful, the L did its usual "we're not going to stop at your stop" but today the difference was there was another train within five minutes or so, so it could have been worse. I ended up at a 116th Street off the 1 feeling kind of disoriented, I don't get uptown often and it's this whole other New York I'm usually only vaguely aware of. Today though it was beautiful. The color was just right, a kind of bright gray that suited Columbia and Barnard perfectly and I went to Riverside to see my kids graduate during this day of supressed sunlight.

I graduated fifteen years ago, I thought about that while I walked up to the church at 120th and Riverside. A lot's happened but in the end, regardless, it's fifteen years. I remember we had ours in the gym and it was hot, airless, and I could have cared less about being there. My father felt weak with the heat, Dennis Park gave a speech and I felt like I wished Lemke had given the speech, at least it wouldn't have been a cliche, but those things feel doomed to be cliches.

Really what I think about when I think about my graduation is the night before. There'd been a big group of people hanging out, maybe by Adam's, anyway, afterwards, Terhune and I were driving around, and as happens when driving around aimlessly for a couple hours, talk turned to the bigger issues. We kept coming back to the idea that life was about to get better, after all, high school sucked unbelievably, it really did, especially the hours. Some morons, you can tell, talk in warm, oaky tones about the glow of those old high school days - oh yeah! Overwhelming fear of rejection, rejection, hours of homework, getting up at 6:30 (or more like 6:58) so I could be out the door by 7:10, pep rallies to cheer our tormentors, fear of zits, zits, minimum wage jobs that ate up the weekends as if they were hyperactive children with pez dispensers (us) and an all-pervading fear of failing to measure up. Good times! And I left so much out...

But the most amazing friends. And Terhune and I driving around talking about what was next, often Terhune would register his amazement that God hadn't taken him out for sport, and then we were making fun of the bastards and looking to turn right on Kensington near where later Terhune would prop up the headless roadkill, the light had turned green but for whatever reason I checked to my left and seemingly out of nowhere an 18-wheeler looking like 30 was going 70 and whooshed right by, the Malibu shuddering, the Jimi Hendrix Experience singing "Red House" on the 8-track and we'd almost bought the farm. To me that was the end of high school.

But today was the end for many of my students and they were beautiful. I knew this kid when I was in high school, he was the kind of kid you wanted to be like, he wasn't popular, he was admired. I was never really his friend, I was too messed up for that, he was one of those together kids who awed me with their early onset of competence, meanwhile I was getting detention for forgetting to bring in forms, or I was looking longingly at all these girls who couldn't remember me now if they tried and couldn't then either. Once, somebody I know ran into one of those girls at a charity golf outing that my friend was helping run. Cameron Jenkins, the aforesaid one of the "one of these girls" was asked if she remembered me. "Yes," she said absolutely blankly, "I think I do." We didn't know the first thing about these girls but would often construct ideas on them based on the flimsiest overseen pretexts and observations. Anyway, one of my students really reminded me of Stan Steck but it took until today to realize it. Raul. What an amazing person. Another kid, it took an extra year, Luther, I taught in my first year, I think he'll be the last one from my first year to graduate. I was sitting way in the back but I could see his smile from there. Then there was Iris, with the kindest heart and Roseline who made me laugh all the time and Rafael who wears his talent so casually that I often wonder how he'll harness all of it. There was Carla, who tore me up once when taking one of my tests, she was so frustrated she left the room in tears, she always never once appeared to think another kid was beneath her taking notice, something you notice if you've been the other kid, and then Jodi who, like all geniuses, is insatiably curious and kept taking my books and returning them without me noticing either way for the better part of a year. Some of these kids I'll never see again.

It's a bit like a crash in that it's a sudden stop. It's everyday and than it isn't.

Leaving graduation, there's a lot of pictures. For these kids, unlike for me, it wasn't necessarily expected or even particularly encouraged they'd end up even this far. The school graduates about half of the students who enter in any given year, it's been that way for awhile, walking back to the subway I thought about the other kids, who had been off doing other things today.

Monday, June 26, 2006

fun with the bastards

There rarely has been a name so fitting as Peter King's is, the New York Republican and Representative is all in a tizzy because the New York Times published a story about terror networks, banking and the United States Government once again spying on everybody without all the hassles of following the law.

Really, everywhere you look hardly anybody likes democracy anymore. We prefer instead the tyrannies of suspician, fear, hatred and stereotype. You can't even burn a flag anymore without everybody acting like you've just gone on and declared jihad or had a homosexual marriage or something. P. King, brought out the tiresome ax of the New York Times as Liberal Elite Agenda Setters but don't you know sir, that job belongs to Kos now and already people are making money on that front. Nah, this was just good old fashioned journalism with the added caveat that the New York Times let the government know what it was doing. Well, Peter King wants the Government to sue.

After all it's a war.

A war of our own making, but a war regardless. Oh sure, if some flag-non-burner came across this somehow he might fidget and fuss and talk about 9/11 but that's like talking about the Bears chances at a Cubs game.

I'm all for containment when we talk about nut-bars on the Korean peninsula because I've seen Japan and liked it, why have it nuked twice? As well, it's always nice to make nice with China before this becomes a cluster-fuck with a barbie-lovin' scotch-swillin' dictator involved who actually HAS atomic capabilities (and that sounds so '50s: "atomic capabilities" that I just want to sit here and think about ray guns and zombies for a minute), one way to do that might be to ask them to help set some limits before Seattle is buying bottled water and digging shelters, and then maybe, enforce them? It's easy to be for active diplomacy, even if it festers, falters or perhaps fails; in working the diplomacy the successful diplomat is working with others as well, many who are sane, and it helps build things like cohesion, unity, things that tend to create actions based not on abstractions and desires of a reality-to-be, but actual reality, and occasionally, however rarely, actual facts.

But we've pissed away our democracy (no pun intended Mr. King), and the vultures of the Government are out there looking to turn people's heads this way and that way and any way away from things that might matter even a little - little things like governance, corruption, greed and classism. This is a government at war with the poor and at war with the idea that government has any role to play but as the footservants and ushers of wealth.

It's all very good for Warren Buffet to leave us some money, to be distributed in an approved manner to the poor who will still be poor, and that's better than nothing, I think, but, like that guy in the 1790s who was richer than everybody else in Virginia, who freed his slaves, it didn't suddenly make the Washingtons, the Jeffersons, or anybody else for that manner start suddenly releasing their slaves, it's the rare pharoah after all, who lets people go, don't expect the Abramoffs, Skillings and other assorted bastards suddenly friendly caretakers of the poor. They're too busy taking us for all we're worth.

Anyway, I was just annoyed, it's humid again in New York, which is kind of like saying it's New York, and the trains are a pain in the ass lately, but no more so than usual, except there was a cranberry bottle rolling around the car today filled with piss and, one hopes, a little vinegar.

Friday, June 23, 2006

been awhile // goings-ons

Reading Celine's Journey to the End of the Night right now, it really doesn't get much better.

Otherwise, the news is mostly stressed though instead of thinking about how I have to move and find out if I have a job I end up thinking about those soldiers in Baghdad who were kidnapped and tortured over the weekend while Dick Cheney gave a little roast for Rummy during the reunion of Ford Administration appointees right here in New York (and some Daily News guy was given an award by the group for his coverage of White House affairs! What a surprise, it's like getting an award for being a sycophant). So ol' Dick was yukkin' it up about how Rummy was only the SECOND BEST Secretary of Defense ever (D.C. himself once served that venerable post!) and they were eating swell and meanwhile another couple soldiers found the monsters and were dumped into the twilight in some neighborhood, ringed with traps designed to further desecrate their 20-something bodies if the marines came in too fast.

Something strange is going on in Miami and I won't be too surprised to find out that the plot to terrorize America will become a few conversations, a shared living space and some odd ideas coupled with some fledgling and clumsy attempts to reach out and find some boom materials. FOX will treat it as a kind of Defcon 2 moment with the President of the United States coaching actively to insure our safety and meanwhile in reality the bastard's simply on the sidelines while the House makes sure the real players get as much money as they can stuff into their pockets. Seriously, why not just make the House chambers a big wind machine where rich men can come and grab at money awhile. At least mess up their hair a little.

The liberal blogosphere apparently has a network ("the Townhouse") where they kind of keep in touch and decide what to emphasize and what to bury -- pathetic. One of them was going after some profits illegal, he must have figured why not see what the Republicans are getting all excited about? Found out he liked it and got investigated, so now they're trying to bury the story and you have to wonder why? Don't they get it, transparancy allows you to move ahead faster, because now the questions are going to be about the action, and not just the action where you can regret your mistake, look forward to moving on and not acting so thoughlessly like an asshole in the future, but you spend another year and a day answering questions about the cover-up. Anything with moving parts breaks...a cover-up usually has lots of moving parts because it's attempting to create an alternate reality, which is kind of like making skin.

Good luck with that fuck-os..

A brief note about my students...I've been lucky this year to have such a wonderful group of studenten -- it's not even summer but I miss having them around. I learned a lot from them this year, I feel lucky to have a job where there is so much to think about, all the time.

Walking up Bedford:
Hpim0821

Me at the school:
Meanother_day_at_the_schoolneeding_a_sha

At_grove_and_bleecker

Thursday, June 08, 2006

tired, absent from the scene...



Today I ran around City College taking care of teacher certification crap, it could have been worse, but when they told us to go to the registrar's, it was weird to see it being torn down.

It's been a busy last few weeks, hard to make time to think, much less write anything here, and excitement has been in short supply. The Cubs are terrible, inflation is up and the president is talking about gay marriage, meanwhile the fearless Hillary Clinton is supporting an anti-flag burning amendment.

That's it for now...but soon I'd like to write...