102918 So insanely frustrating. Computer bullshit. Can’t get the network to work. Can’t the sound output selector to work. Can’t get the page to load. Well you can get all that to work much of the time, but by the time you do, you’ve spent so much of your attention of futzing around with that type of bullshit that there’s just that much left for whatever it was the computer was ostensibly going to enable you to do in the first place. It’s like using an oven to kill a fly? Question mark? Had a pretty good day-- Is it OK if I dispense with the usual disclaimers about how I don’t have anything to say and I don’t think this is interesting and it’s all pointles and I’m just doing it because I’m following a schedule where you just do it? Is it OK if we skip that part and start stacking up words for their own sake? The net effect should be the same. I should still get through the pointlessness and discover if there’s a mushroom hiding in the pine needles beside the clearing, the secret clearing where the sunshine angles through and everything is hushed and mossy. There may not be one. There may be a few scattered remnants of some teenagers’ campfire; a condom, beer cans, someone’s ripped shirt, a pack a smokes. There may be a highway too close by; the pine needles may be dusted with the carbon haze of industrial hurrying. There may be a cold wind; the boughs are too thin; the earth is shaved bare, shivering, naked under the lunar gaze of aliens; unprotected from the stark invisible starlight. It might be too damn complicated to crawl into; a bramble, a thicket, an alder hell. Or not. It may be really sweet and magical. A place you want to take the kids and let them see and smell and hear and be hushed by. A portal to that other place that’s always just around this bend in the path; just behind that clump of ordinary-looking trees; (before the development was here and put a street down right through yoda’s place) But so yeah. I had a pretty good day. Met with a sixth grader and told her about going back through your sentences and finding the questions they raise but don’t answer, and then answering them. Tried to show her how to “AQC.” Made a video out of all that to share with everyone else. I’m so glad I discovered youcanbook.me (this is not a commercial) because it makes it so much easier for kids to make appointments with me, which makes it more likely that they will, which means I’ll have more opportunities to try to actually teach someone something, which means I’ll have more rich ingredients to bring back to the cake of the whole class, which means the classes will get better and better as far as content beyond just eSessions, which means I’ll be able to relax a little bit and also still be doing a decent job. From the one to the many and back again. Cel’s down below me in the pool. I watched thru the big locked window door until I saw that she was able to speak up and get to her correct class. That’s so awesome; whether it’s because of my parenting acumen or my disorganized weirdness, she knows how to do that without my even being in there. So many parents of kids plenty older than her still have to go in and hand-hold the whole way. Pretty stoked about the basement office too. Yeah it sux cuz it’s the basement, but I just need to change things up every now and then or I feel dust-cloaked and stupid. Plus I think it’s going to help for a while to have a clear separation between work and not-work. My bedroom can be a bedroom now. The only desk is the typewriter desk. When I go downstairs, I’m working on designating pre-set chunks of time to do one goddamn thing at a time. OK, you have 15 minutes to answer emails. OK, you are now going to make this video that you thought of (instead of putting it on a todo-eventually list where it will languish until you lose interest) right now, and then you will do something else. OK, you have 20 minutes to grade before it’s time to get ready for class. Etc. I’m really tired of feeling like I’ve “worked” all day, only to find that I’ve spent about 80% of my precious time staring at the screen and not quite doing about seven or eight different things. THAT ENDS NOW!! Yeah, so yeah. Tap tap tap. I don’t have any magic epiphanies today, sorry. You can just keep rustling past this one. Kick over the little ad hoc leaf piles in the wooden path. Keep strolling; get that rhythm up, get your breathing up, get the pace going. Work the kinks out of your knees. Think until you don’t have to think so much anymore=. Have the space to let shit go, let the thoughts steam out of your head like water out of a kettle. Let the squirrels and chipmunks make tea out of your thoughts. They can have a tea party with your curiously colored blue and white thoughts. Your lacy thoughts. Your ad hoc thrift shop eclectic collection of little china thoughts. They can invite that fox you saw the other day, who crossed Racine Ave and headed up a side street, and who, when you followed, stopped beside a bush, mouth full of something, then calmly cantered off a few dozen yards to eat--some little animal? A squirrel or a chipmunk perhaps? Well yes, er um yeah, well, sure, we’ll put that all behind us. Three o’clock you say? By the widely gesturing old oak, with blazing leaves full of enchantment; we’ll have tea; we’ll have tea made out of those leaves and that sunshine and this chill in the electrified air; it’s fall; drink up; drink it in; we who have survived until today; we’re all right for now; for now, we’re together; have some tea; come on in; have some tea; there’s nothing so fragile and permanent as forgiveness, and tea--