work on nothing

i am in a wandering mood this evening. met the kids at the piano teacher's house, sitting reading about reading comprehension and musing how i was going to incorporate the "reader's workshop" conception and system to a special ed class in which instruction must be individualized... helped the kids with their homework between attempts to snatch baby lizards from the tops of the neatly trimmed mock-orange hedges (i think the secret is to grab before you think about grabbing)... then home with a head full of idle thoughts on how to decorate the house for halloween, and what to do for friday's school halloween party...

the sky is pleasantly dreary, and i love the sound of rain as it insistently hushes the earth loud and quiet with white noise. the wind, loud and at times disturbingly violent, somehow feels clean, as tiny minced fingertips of breezes happen to stir through the barely open screens, stirring things gently... i am comforted by the way the vertical blinds will click softly, rattling like old bones at the touch of the storm outside...

i feel sorry for birds. i recall how, one day, after a particularly blustery storm, i walked across the parking lot at waikele with my kids, and we noticed a finch stricken dead on the ground. a few footsteps found another, and another, until i counted a total of ten such birds, all adults, all otherwise perfectly healthy, but all definitely dead, their talons clutched. it was somewhat traumatic to my children. i explained that when the wind blows, the birds have nowhere to hide, and they are tossed from their homes in the boughs and crashed against the earth... (not in those terms, not in so harsh a manner).

sometimes, when the rain takes over, and gets really loud, i swear i can hear voices shouting from the deep rain drainage ditch behind our house, as though someone were trapped down there, yelling for help...

***

i am a man full of plans. idealistic. but i am old enough to understand the limits of time and endurance. i also have come to understand that a single person contains many, many voices, and many, many motivations, and the higher motivations sometimes only win out after time is patiently doled out to the "lower" motivations. a lot of time is wasted. but i've come to understand (grudgingly, or complacently) that there really is little alternative: people are like blossoms, or crumpled paper, or origami (take your pick), and we only reveal our true shape through a slow, sequential unfolding process. we aren't in control, necessarily, of which fold will open first, or what shape everything will take in the process. in a way, the process of unfolding occurs through us...

and we have only to behold, in wonderment, at who we are, and what the world is in response to our flowering.

***

i look forward to halloween, but this year, there are no new heroes/villains to emulate/copy. i think i am going to recycle costumes. i am dressing as kakashi for the kids in my class, and for sunday, i may revamp my old crow costume. but we'll see...

in the meantime, i hope you, reader, are well, and take respite, and "work on nothing"...