yesterday was monday, the first official day of my fall break. i spent the morning over at leilehua high school, where i was one of the teachers/presenters for a fall steam project for interested 5th graders in the complex. i made a short video explaining levers, and how some of the principles behind levers could help students in making their mobiles. it was fun. i always feel awkward in front of cameras, and the set up that they had, with a huge screen with all the participants, and a "stage" where you stand and speak to everyone... well, it was kind of daunting. i always don't know where to look when i'm in a virtual meeting like that. i prefer to look at the face that i'm addressing, but most of the time, that's nowhere near where the camera that's projecting me is. so when i looked at myself, i was always speaking off to the side or something... oh well.
yesterday was also lynn's first day back to work (interesting how that always works out). she had a really long, really hard day. basically she needed to dispose of a ton (maybe literally!) of expired food stuffs. that basically meant filling a car with boxes and boxes of heavy food stuffs, transporting it to the dumpster, and heaving it in. over and over and over again. i offered to help, but she said that some of her friends had come to assist her today. thank god for friends!
i've been able to chug along through my routines, though maybe that's being a bit selfish. i should be addressing my son's issues. he still has an outstanding project for algebra ii, and we were kind of stuck on how to translate the graphs of these lines so that the overall shape (a snowflake) is centered on his birthday, 6, 29. i kind of remember the stuff, but not really, so i couldn't offer direct assistance. i think if i research the topic a bit, i could figure it out. anyway, maybe i should be doing stuff like that. or going over some of the classes he'd had a difficult time with. and maybe i will. but it seems as though i have this break before me, and i'm already still riddled with work obligations and such (today, after taking the kids to a doctor's appointment, i have to go into campus to test a student for his iep)... oh well. i need to start reprioritizing things so i address my son. i do love him, a lot, but it is sometimes difficult to address the real complex problems surrounding him. it's always tempting to take the easy path out.
right now, i hear the croaking voice of this bird. strangely enough, it can also produce the sweetest songs. i believe it is some kind of nightingale or songbird or something, imported from elsewhere. it has an orange breast, and it has this slow-moving tail that it moves ponderously up and down. anyway, it has taken up residence in or near our yard. i think the big draw is probably my worm bin. one day, i had tipped the worm bin on its side to allow some of the excess liquid to drain out, and next thing i know, this bird had hopped in to the bin to feast on the available worms. since then, i have always been watching out for that bird when i tip the bin. it is actually pretty bold, and won't immediately flee in my vicinity. anyway, one day i tipped the bin, and pretended to weed or something near a corner. i noticed the bird trying to creep around a pillar to get at the worms. it was pretty comical when i caught it in its almost-act... anyway, i kind of like that bird (and its probable partner, whom i never see). the birds i really dislike are the bulbuls, because they are smart and sneaky, and feast on a lot of my red crops.
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i've been reading a few short stories again. the last couple that i read from amy hempell (sp?) were better. but i still find the characters so- obtuse? so strange. so- off. that again, it's hard for me to sympathize or feel any investment in them. i think the need to create a "splash" with these short stories, and present something so off-beat and off-kilter that it forces attention... well, it also tends to make things far more abstract and inaccessible. maybe i lack the kind of empathy that can immediately "get it"; like, tell what the issues are, tell what the signs are... i don't. and maybe that is what makes me such a clod with, well, women, and most people in general.
(although, i think, i have a strength in empathizing with children.)
i've also read further into tobias wolff's book, "old school," which i thought was going to be a collection of short stories, but is actually a novel in its own right, divided up into themed chapters. it's a great book. i understand why david sedaris liked him. i also found it kind of telling and endearing that wolff actually remembered sedaris coming to his book signings, even before sedaris was famous. it speaks of the kind of attention he pays to people...
in the latest part of the book, the protagonist enters a writing competition to earn the right to speak to a visiting author. i suppose it's a periodic thing at this school, and there have already been visits from robert frost and ayn rand. now ernest hemingway is coming, and he happens to be the protagonist's favorite author (and, he claims, the best writer of his time). the day before entries were due, he still hadn't started writing his entry. he chances upon a piece of writing by a girl in a literary magazine from one of the nearby girls' schools, and he is immediately siezed upon by the writing. he actually claims it as his own story, he identifies with it so much. he just changes the names and some finer points of the situations, and turns it in. it's funny how he doesn't seem to consider it plagiarism initially... he just feels like the girl, with her frank writing, is capturing HIS story, only in her particular context. he wins; ernest hemingway loves the story; but of course, he gets found out...
in any case, one thing that struck me... and maybe it's because of ernest hemingway, whom i have read one book of ("old man and the sea")... but this notion of writing the truth, in bold but honest lines, has always been something i've wanted to do. i guess i've run into one of two problems: either the truth has been so singularly boring for me (no major events, no remembered events), or it has just been too difficult to write plainly and simply about what is the pain in my heart. maybe, with regards to the latter, it has been buried so deeply beneath scar tissue, that it is hard to feel it any more...
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well, i've got errands to run. have to take the kids over to the doctor's soon...
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