so lynn "commandeered" me to assist her with her books from work. i found myself adding up rows of figures and entering the sums in blanks. when i made a snide remark about how wonderful it was to do this sort of work, and lynn protested, i laughed, chided, "the attitude comes free."
lynn laughed at that, and said: "whatever happened to the boyfriend who used to want to help me out?"
and i responded: "he turned into the husband who had no choice."
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
of rice and men
stick in the mud-
upright, slightly swaying-
to time's dictates
slightly obeying-
and with season's fullness
miserly paying.
man in the mud-
hunched accumulated years-
under crop's burden;
dirty fingers picking ears.
downcast eyes that must remain unspent
or salt the paddies with countless tears.
upright, slightly swaying-
to time's dictates
slightly obeying-
and with season's fullness
miserly paying.
man in the mud-
hunched accumulated years-
under crop's burden;
dirty fingers picking ears.
downcast eyes that must remain unspent
or salt the paddies with countless tears.
this weekend has largely been dominated by the wedding of my father-in-law, thomas, to irene. we had a rehearsal and dinner on thursday night (after which i returned home alone to mililani), the actual wedding on friday, a birthday party for ian (my sister's son) on saturday, and another get-together this evening. all in all, i'm kind of partied out...
it is a beautiful thing for two older, more mature people to find love. it is as though a breeze has suddenly stirred dark coals to fierce life. astonishing. i am happy for both of them, but particularly for thomas, whom i feel is, above all, a decent and upright person. he deserves to be happy.
...
petty, but what has largely preoccupied my thoughts this weekend has been my recent (friday's) observed lesson. i teach a preschool sped class. i decided (somewhat at the last minute) to utilize the theymightbegiants dvd, "here come the abc's", and in particular, the song, "can you find the hidden letter?" in that song, letters are hidden in the pictures. my idea was to use this song and its game as the springboard for having kids identify letters in a variety of contexts. i wanted kids to practice perceiving letters everywhere, not just on the cards taped up on the walls. this, i felt, was an exercise in emergent literacy; empowering kids to perceive letters (text) in a variety of contexts, from cereal boxes, to t-shirts, to (of course) newspapers and books.
i thought the lesson went well. but my observing teacher said, quite plainly, that she "didn't see the point" of what i had done, and that i "was all over the place." after stating her overall negative assessment of my lesson, she had the nerve to ask me how i thought the lesson went. what was i supposed to say? i told her quite honestly that i thought the lesson had gone well. i proceeded to attempt to defend myself, by stating that recognizing letters in a variety of contexts was the beginning of literacy; it was applying letter recognition as taught via cards, etc. to more real life situations. she nodded her head, but in the end, still said that "i hadn't actually taught the kids anything."
okay, so she may have a point. but i ask you: what do you explicitly teach a group of kids how to do? i do a lot of work in smaller groups, and within that context, do spend a lot of one-on-one time to address particular skills that students need: how to correctly hold a pencil, how to write the number 4 with correct stroke order, color recognition, etc. and in larger groups, i have read stories, asking comprehension questions, color/number/letter questions, etc. in all of that, i am not clear what my observing teacher wanted. was i supposed to teach these kids how to read cvc words!?
[while my policy is never to edit my posted work, i realized i was pretty negative and critical in this posting. i apologize for any judgmental comments i may have made, and place my faith in a larger perspective that can understand and forgive, and, more importantly, be humble...]
...
right now, i'm kind of feeling blah. i really slept a lot yesterday into today, and had a string of really disturbing dreams... in many of my most disturbing dreams, there is the image of water, like the rain drainage canals, only, they go down deep, deep, and even into the bottomless seas. and they are inhabited by creatures and nameless shifting rotting things. the interface between the deep abysmal waters and the sewers/gutters is where the "humanistic" horrors live. under that, there is a vast darkness that makes all man, all meaning, all of the middling, contextualize the spectrum efforts of man, completely irrelevant. there are shadowy vast carnivorous creatures that would swallow our whole civilization without hesitation, like so much plankton. an eye so vast that we are but dust motes on the fluid over its all-consuming iris...
jung said that the waters were the symbol of the collective unconscious. and so i always see dreams of waters, even the interface between the civilized world above and the waters below (via the sewers/gutters) as dreams of the relationship between my fragile self and the vast collective unconscious. those who are naive think that the waters can be mastered, that we as rational man can "make sense" of the forces we have superimposed our order over. but they are wrong. we are minute, we are as close to nothing as can be. our "order" is nothing but a chant we have repeated over and over to ourselves, to convince ourselves of its veracity. but it is all made up...
civilization, according to chinese (and other cultural) mythology has been the taming of the floods, by various means, including irrigation. but in our high-and-dry times, we have forgotten our relationship to the fearful waters. we believe in our cities, in our social networks. we believe they can save us all. in fact, we are so confident that we don't believe there is any danger to begin with. but a day is coming, i think, when we will confront the waters again, both externally (results of global warming and the acid seas) and internally (psychological washing erosion of ancient pre-cultural fears)...
ugly thoughts, i know.
...
well, i'd best do my shabby little part to stave the tides. i think i'll clean up this wreck of a house and pretend an order into being in my life... until next time, whoever you may be, oh lost and bewildered reader, take care...
it is a beautiful thing for two older, more mature people to find love. it is as though a breeze has suddenly stirred dark coals to fierce life. astonishing. i am happy for both of them, but particularly for thomas, whom i feel is, above all, a decent and upright person. he deserves to be happy.
...
petty, but what has largely preoccupied my thoughts this weekend has been my recent (friday's) observed lesson. i teach a preschool sped class. i decided (somewhat at the last minute) to utilize the theymightbegiants dvd, "here come the abc's", and in particular, the song, "can you find the hidden letter?" in that song, letters are hidden in the pictures. my idea was to use this song and its game as the springboard for having kids identify letters in a variety of contexts. i wanted kids to practice perceiving letters everywhere, not just on the cards taped up on the walls. this, i felt, was an exercise in emergent literacy; empowering kids to perceive letters (text) in a variety of contexts, from cereal boxes, to t-shirts, to (of course) newspapers and books.
i thought the lesson went well. but my observing teacher said, quite plainly, that she "didn't see the point" of what i had done, and that i "was all over the place." after stating her overall negative assessment of my lesson, she had the nerve to ask me how i thought the lesson went. what was i supposed to say? i told her quite honestly that i thought the lesson had gone well. i proceeded to attempt to defend myself, by stating that recognizing letters in a variety of contexts was the beginning of literacy; it was applying letter recognition as taught via cards, etc. to more real life situations. she nodded her head, but in the end, still said that "i hadn't actually taught the kids anything."
okay, so she may have a point. but i ask you: what do you explicitly teach a group of kids how to do? i do a lot of work in smaller groups, and within that context, do spend a lot of one-on-one time to address particular skills that students need: how to correctly hold a pencil, how to write the number 4 with correct stroke order, color recognition, etc. and in larger groups, i have read stories, asking comprehension questions, color/number/letter questions, etc. in all of that, i am not clear what my observing teacher wanted. was i supposed to teach these kids how to read cvc words!?
[while my policy is never to edit my posted work, i realized i was pretty negative and critical in this posting. i apologize for any judgmental comments i may have made, and place my faith in a larger perspective that can understand and forgive, and, more importantly, be humble...]
...
right now, i'm kind of feeling blah. i really slept a lot yesterday into today, and had a string of really disturbing dreams... in many of my most disturbing dreams, there is the image of water, like the rain drainage canals, only, they go down deep, deep, and even into the bottomless seas. and they are inhabited by creatures and nameless shifting rotting things. the interface between the deep abysmal waters and the sewers/gutters is where the "humanistic" horrors live. under that, there is a vast darkness that makes all man, all meaning, all of the middling, contextualize the spectrum efforts of man, completely irrelevant. there are shadowy vast carnivorous creatures that would swallow our whole civilization without hesitation, like so much plankton. an eye so vast that we are but dust motes on the fluid over its all-consuming iris...
jung said that the waters were the symbol of the collective unconscious. and so i always see dreams of waters, even the interface between the civilized world above and the waters below (via the sewers/gutters) as dreams of the relationship between my fragile self and the vast collective unconscious. those who are naive think that the waters can be mastered, that we as rational man can "make sense" of the forces we have superimposed our order over. but they are wrong. we are minute, we are as close to nothing as can be. our "order" is nothing but a chant we have repeated over and over to ourselves, to convince ourselves of its veracity. but it is all made up...
civilization, according to chinese (and other cultural) mythology has been the taming of the floods, by various means, including irrigation. but in our high-and-dry times, we have forgotten our relationship to the fearful waters. we believe in our cities, in our social networks. we believe they can save us all. in fact, we are so confident that we don't believe there is any danger to begin with. but a day is coming, i think, when we will confront the waters again, both externally (results of global warming and the acid seas) and internally (psychological washing erosion of ancient pre-cultural fears)...
ugly thoughts, i know.
...
well, i'd best do my shabby little part to stave the tides. i think i'll clean up this wreck of a house and pretend an order into being in my life... until next time, whoever you may be, oh lost and bewildered reader, take care...
Sunday, February 1, 2009
anxiolytic
the end is nigh.
with every breath
and every sigh-
the world draws closer to its hot death.
and would i do
or would i don't
i can't save the world.
the end is near
and every face
infects a fear
of a hostile and a stranger'ed race.
and would i act
or would i stay
i am not immunized from this plague.
the end is here
but all i'll try
is live as though
i could not see,
and smile and rock
my children on my knee.
and when it comes
the last my sight
will close upon
my sleeping babes
their morrow'ed dream
that never wakes
and i will hold them close
like a lid
upon a wondering eye.
and i will be happy
when i die.
with every breath
and every sigh-
the world draws closer to its hot death.
and would i do
or would i don't
i can't save the world.
the end is near
and every face
infects a fear
of a hostile and a stranger'ed race.
and would i act
or would i stay
i am not immunized from this plague.
the end is here
but all i'll try
is live as though
i could not see,
and smile and rock
my children on my knee.
and when it comes
the last my sight
will close upon
my sleeping babes
their morrow'ed dream
that never wakes
and i will hold them close
like a lid
upon a wondering eye.
and i will be happy
when i die.
who reads this stuff anyway
i made a lot of resolutions for this new year, but it seems like illness (repeated!!! i must have had three consecutive colds this year alone!) and the stress of school and work have conspired to set me aback. i've still some fight left in me, but there's a side that more and more feels it's perhaps more expedient to "go with the flow" of things.
writing has taken a back seat. although i do want to participate in reviewfuse.com, a website that allows you to get/give feedback to/from aspiring writers like yourself, i haven't made a submission yet. and although i would like to start using applied behavioral analysis to "guilt"/coerce myself to write a consistent amount (say five pages every night), hell, i haven't gotten that started yet...
there are always so many other things.
for one thing, as a parent, i have to set educational goals for my kids. i bought an interactive globe, for one thing, in an effort to teach them geography (it's fun! i probably fiddle with it more than the kids). i bought kidpix for the mac to encourage the kids (mainly willow) to interact and produce using the computer. i want to get this program that allows the kids (again, mainly willow) to create animation; in conjunction with this, i would like to get her a drawing pad, so that she can better interface with the computer...
i've been working on aiden the best that i can. i've been repeatedly drilling counting to 30 (for some reason, he sometimes still skips 15... but he's done it correctly for a few times now); his phonics; and training him to hold his pencil/spoon/fork correctly. it's best to use a gentle approach with aiden. while willow is largely self-motivated, and gets upset primarily because she feels it an impingement on her independence to be told/instructed how to do something, aiden is largely UNmotivated, and will gladly languish in his collective inabilities, unless he is somehow convinced that he WANTS to do it. i've had to be really patient and positive, and connect with aiden in a more loving, supportive way. i've actually enjoyed interacting with him this way, it's far more relaxing, far less "driven." and lo and behold, he seems to thrive. he actually wants to do violin with me, for example, and every now and then, he will try to SHOW me that he knows his phonics, or can count to 30. he's awesome...
i just received the anatomy trains dvds today. i can't wait to learn this stuff in a more visceral fashion. i have been wrestling with anatomy trains concepts when working on my patients... while i have had some success, in large part, i feel i have reached an impasse/plateau. if i can get "structure" down, it will allow me to deal with a major contributor to most of the problems i see in my patients. after that, i will deal with the far more nebulous subject of "energy" and physiology...
one of my patients mentioned something about this secret practice of re-setting nerves. i've heard about "miraculous" and legendary practitioners who could do this; by means of re-setting nerves, the muscles innervated would spontaneously relax... sounds strange, but i would like to learn this skill as well. hell, throw in zheng gu (bonesetting) while i'm at it.
sounds weird, but i'm also trying to get at the topic of "energy" through various means. there is the "perception" of energy, literally, seeing energy; and there is the "feeling" of energy... qi/ki/energy is a confusing topic. semantically, it could be that the energy referred to by one person is very different from that referred to by another... is the qi of martial arts, the same as the qi in healing/acupuncture? does qi even really exist?
here's my current path of exploration. i'm trying to do some aura exercises (hokey as this may sound). i'm also trying to do more pile standing, to experience this magic "click" into proper structure and grounding, and from there, to the experience of the mythic "pulse of life" (this is largely from vandersloot's book). sure, i may be wasting my time... but i would like to verify "energy" viscerally, instead of always speaking of it in more or less abstract ways...
well, enough bs for tonight...
who reads this crap anyway?
writing has taken a back seat. although i do want to participate in reviewfuse.com, a website that allows you to get/give feedback to/from aspiring writers like yourself, i haven't made a submission yet. and although i would like to start using applied behavioral analysis to "guilt"/coerce myself to write a consistent amount (say five pages every night), hell, i haven't gotten that started yet...
there are always so many other things.
for one thing, as a parent, i have to set educational goals for my kids. i bought an interactive globe, for one thing, in an effort to teach them geography (it's fun! i probably fiddle with it more than the kids). i bought kidpix for the mac to encourage the kids (mainly willow) to interact and produce using the computer. i want to get this program that allows the kids (again, mainly willow) to create animation; in conjunction with this, i would like to get her a drawing pad, so that she can better interface with the computer...
i've been working on aiden the best that i can. i've been repeatedly drilling counting to 30 (for some reason, he sometimes still skips 15... but he's done it correctly for a few times now); his phonics; and training him to hold his pencil/spoon/fork correctly. it's best to use a gentle approach with aiden. while willow is largely self-motivated, and gets upset primarily because she feels it an impingement on her independence to be told/instructed how to do something, aiden is largely UNmotivated, and will gladly languish in his collective inabilities, unless he is somehow convinced that he WANTS to do it. i've had to be really patient and positive, and connect with aiden in a more loving, supportive way. i've actually enjoyed interacting with him this way, it's far more relaxing, far less "driven." and lo and behold, he seems to thrive. he actually wants to do violin with me, for example, and every now and then, he will try to SHOW me that he knows his phonics, or can count to 30. he's awesome...
i just received the anatomy trains dvds today. i can't wait to learn this stuff in a more visceral fashion. i have been wrestling with anatomy trains concepts when working on my patients... while i have had some success, in large part, i feel i have reached an impasse/plateau. if i can get "structure" down, it will allow me to deal with a major contributor to most of the problems i see in my patients. after that, i will deal with the far more nebulous subject of "energy" and physiology...
one of my patients mentioned something about this secret practice of re-setting nerves. i've heard about "miraculous" and legendary practitioners who could do this; by means of re-setting nerves, the muscles innervated would spontaneously relax... sounds strange, but i would like to learn this skill as well. hell, throw in zheng gu (bonesetting) while i'm at it.
sounds weird, but i'm also trying to get at the topic of "energy" through various means. there is the "perception" of energy, literally, seeing energy; and there is the "feeling" of energy... qi/ki/energy is a confusing topic. semantically, it could be that the energy referred to by one person is very different from that referred to by another... is the qi of martial arts, the same as the qi in healing/acupuncture? does qi even really exist?
here's my current path of exploration. i'm trying to do some aura exercises (hokey as this may sound). i'm also trying to do more pile standing, to experience this magic "click" into proper structure and grounding, and from there, to the experience of the mythic "pulse of life" (this is largely from vandersloot's book). sure, i may be wasting my time... but i would like to verify "energy" viscerally, instead of always speaking of it in more or less abstract ways...
well, enough bs for tonight...
who reads this crap anyway?
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