040308 Need to get ready for an interview; would rather munch my muffin and listen to this old pair at the next table talk like people maybe on almost a date. They sound almost exactly like normal people, except they’re old. You know what I mean? I’m not trying to be stupid. Aging is just so surreal. Imagine being nervous and bold in a coffee shop with, say, Anne, only with liver spots on the backs of my hands, hearing aids behind my ears, extra decades behind me of having woken up and gone back to bed, over and over again. Nobody gets a free ticket to someone else’s heart, and nobody in their right mind would want one. 040708 I’m just really not in the right profession. I just really should not have done this. This really fucking blows. I don’t want to do this. I really, really, really have no interest in insinuating myself into these situations, and trying to, I don’t know, prove something or whatever the hell it is you’re supposed to do. I have no interest in “relating to them;” I have no interest in “reaching them;” well, whatever. That’s not completely true. But I sure am afraid I’m not going to be able to. I’m sick, I’m tired, I’m pale, I’m shivering, full of fear, and about as unvigorous and uncool as I’ve ever been. This fucking sucks. HOLY FUCK! That was the most vivid deja vue moment I’ve had in a long time. Mueller was talking about some pitcher being called a douche bag by some other player, only he wasn’t saying “douche bag,” because he was telling the story to 10th graders, but the whole time I swear to god it was like the third time I had experienced it. THAT’S SO FUCKING CREEPY! But anyway, back to the whine, I’m just so tired of feeling phony. Like a phone. I just want to “be myself,” but it’s been so long since I’ve been that, I don’t even know if I know how to do it any more. I guess I’ll have to figure that one out in the arena. Fucking arena. All right, fine. Let’s go. Bright point: when that girl in 6A turned to me after Mueller introduced me, and said, “Are you nice?” I like that kind of forthrightness; it acknowledged the discomfort on both sides, and defused it. 9th graders are so odd. Their regular clothes look like pajamas (the girls, that is; the boys are not so interesting, though odd-faced). Their smiles look as vulnerable as five-year-olds’, but their curves, though slight, are almost as dangerous as the fully fledged! And this is completely unrelated--the true audience of this document knows I’m not really a pervert--but, I really think I prefer junior high. High school students are so protected. So suave. So alert to everything they need to be defensive about. Junior high students are as silly on the outside as I feel on the inside most of the time. Uncontrollable giggling--as a way of life, as a valediction. I feel that I am changing my careeer goals. Right now. This squirelly class is cheering me up, big time. Of course, everything might change come Wednesday.... 042008 The individual’s imagination may be limitless; nevertheless, you don’t want to be limited to yours alone. That’s why we need open, generative communities of intelligence, always. If we can keep the Internet in service of such, so much the better. If not, we’ll have to keep building from other scraps and fragments, wherever we can find them. That’s what we humans do. 042308 I feel so fake.