Hot Water

I had a frank conversation with my brother today. This is an incredibly rare phenomenon and I consider myself very fortunate to have been involved. The conversation focused mostly on our lives and the decisions that we've made recently. Decisions which have been both good and bad. We also talked about plans for the future, and where we think our lives will take us. In some ways we will be traveling a similar path. Increased independence. Contemplating new jobs and new environments. Re-evaluating our relationships. And in other ways, we will be farther apart than ever before.

OKAY, let's make this post a bit more journalistic than usual:

Today, I wrangled with the idea of welding the exhaust system of my car back together. I have never used a welding machine before, but that didn't stop me from ordering one from Amazon. On paper it should be easy, and I do love learning how to do new things. In reality, its a rather a daunting task. I'm not afraid to say that I'm in over my head, but I'm also not afraid to use the exceptionally cold weather today as an excuse to stay inside and just play Halo.

Speaking of which, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, the game that has been broken for the past month, is finally starting to work properly. Very fun to play, and very nostalgic!

I also recently got my camera back from my girlfriend who replaced it in function with a fancy new DSLR. I continue to believe in the superiority of film.

Last, but certainly not least, I am in the process of transferring my teaching certification from New York State to Connecticut. This would enable me to search for public school teaching positions. I've always hated teachers who leave schools after only a few years. In fact, I am of the opinion that high teacher turnover is one of the biggest factors at work in schools that fail, especially in urban areas. Now I am contributing to the problem by leaving a school that I love for a position where I will get paid more. The reason is simple: I want to pay off my student loans within the next 18 months. This is a goal that is simply not possible at my current salary. Still feel like shit about it though.

Here's a photograph of one of my students during a recent experiment:

Dark Dreams

Hello world and welcome to another installment of Andrew's life.

I borrowed two books from the library and failed to finish both of them. They were due last Friday, but they're still sitting in the passenger seat of my car.

I drove to northern Pennsylvania over the weekend to visit a cousin that I hadn't seen in over ten years. We are close to the same age, but she is married now and has two children. I didn't know what to expect when I pulled into her driveway, but I was pleased to find her happy and satisfied with her life, in an exhausted mother-of-two kind of way. I suppose I've reached a point in my own life where my relationship with my family is almost entirely determined by the effort I put forth. I also suppose I reached that point quite a while ago.

I feel tired when I get home from work, but I'm doing so much less now than I was this time last year. If I think about that fact, I feel less tired.

I've found that getting plenty of sleep and drinking plenty of water is the key to perhaps 90% of the problems that face people in life. It may not be a short-term solution for the nightmarish situations that seem to plague so many people, but I am convinced that it is essential in the long run.

This morning, my assistant principal came in to my classroom and gave me an old telescope. No one in this school teaches astronomy, so I do not know why he gave it to me. I'm taking it home this week and playing around with it myself. I'm going to carve out some telescope time and try to feel like a little kid again.

Here's a photograph I recently took at UConn:

Old Habits

As the year has stretched on (and as usual I am stunned by how fast it goes by) I have become keenly aware of the importance and the ritual of habits, my own and those of others that I have observed. It is clear to me that habits and routines are the mechanisms that make our lives speed up or slow down. They can cause us great pain or great pleasure. They can also bring freedom or punishing imprisonment. Because habits often sneak up on you, and are very hard to consciously create, I am often unaware of the habits that I have. I think that periodic personal reflection is a critical component of establishing good habits. Without personal reflection, habits can take the best parts of our lives and reduce them to soldering and malignant tedium.

So here are a couple of habits that I have lost:

I used to have a habit of playing video games. This was not the best part of my life, but it was important for my sense of self worth because I valued who I was when I was playing them. I would never play games alone, and this is important too, because it illustrates that the value in playing them was not in the games themselves, nor in my discovery of values and personal quirks that often happens when consuming media in isolation, but instead lays primarily in the social value of the games. I have always been described by others as an extrovert, but I have also always harbored serious doubts about this in my own heart, because I get socially anxious and often enjoy nothing more than silence and reclusivity (this is not a word, but should be, so in protest to the English language I am keeping it). Playing video games allowed me to indulge not just the part of me that wanted a external validation of my own personality and characteristics (he's a good teammate, he's a solid player), but also satisfied my urge to participate in a collective experience. Playing video games with my friends was stimulating and relaxing, and I have fallen out of this habit in the last two years. I have tried to rationalize it, at certain times, using a variety of explanations and excuses, but it's of no use. I will try to get back into this habit now and in a sustainable way in the future.

Another habit I have lost is the habit of writing. I used to create expansive stories and fictionalized universes, or at least short recounts of personal situations I had found myself in. Writing helped me to think about what I had done or seen or heard and also to think about the way that I reacted to the world. Again, this related to personal reflection. I have largely stopped writing, and I need to develop this habit again. Furthermore, I need to refine and closely examine my writing so that it reflects a consistent tone, approach, and style, and so that my impetus for writing is found in a variety of circumstances and experiences. I don't want to write simply because I was inspired by some monumental but irregular emotional happening in my own life. I want to write well and often about everything and anything, and I want to inspire people with my writing, as I have been so heavily inspired by others.

Lastly, a more recent habit that I would like to carefully consider and methodically eliminate from my life: the habit of appearing to be apathetic about things that I care about, and the habit of feigning emotional investment in things I really care little for. For example, I care very little about my job, or at least about the aspects of my job that everyone else seems to find the most intriguing. I care quite a lot about the implications of our society for the very poor and the very weak, but I have struggled to express this in an effective way. I need to critically analyze my priorities and redouble my efforts every week so that I can proudly and honestly say that my energies are going to the right causes.

This post is more for myself than for other people, but then again that has been the trend of my blog since I was a junior in high school. I'm sure it will continue for some time. Thanks for reading!

Here's a photograph I took this summer, of a very beautiful entrance way:

Air brakes

Have you ever noticed that the air brakes on a bus sound like someone drawing frantic breaths while crying?

I brought one of my Chemistry classes on a field trip to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It was a simple and quick trip. On the train back home, I fell asleep. At one point I was awoken by the movement of the train. Across from me I saw that two of my students had also fallen asleep. Two girls, best friends. They had fallen asleep against each other, the shorter girl resting her head on her friend's shoulder.

I bought a Jeep to assuage my family's concerns about my riding a motorcycle in the winter and also to satisfy my dream of owning a Jeep. My father owns a Jeep. His is beige and mine is red and in slightly worse shape. The mornings are dark now, but I still ride my bicycle. When it is very cold I will drive my newly acquired car. I have figured out how to tune the radio to NPR, and when I turn on the heat, the belt squeaks under the hood and I am reminded of countless dark mornings, driving a cold car and listening to NPR. I feel like I have lived an entire life since then.

There is a new Biology teacher at my school this year, replacing a woman who left to find a better job closer to her new house. She exuded a confidence and stability in the way only an overweight woman can. Her replacement is a young looking man who is very thin and slightly shorter than me. He seems always on the verge of forgetting something, and reacts to small things that I say with what seems to be a genuine and deep surprise. He is twenty nine years old and I am twenty three years old and I try not to sound patronizing when I ask him how he is doing. I think he is overwhelmed with the job.

I have read more books since my last post. I am keeping a list on my computer at home, and I will share it on this blog as soon as I remember to.

Here's a blurry photograph I took at a recent wedding I attended. Believe me when I say that I appreciated the humor in attending a Connecticut wedding held at a Yacht club.

Comeback

Lately I've been reflecting on the elements of personal growth and change which have affected my life. I've also become keenly aware of similarity of the patterns of my own growth and change with those of other people who I have met and known. It seems that everybody goes through cycles of discovery, growth, destruction, and rebirth. The cumulative measure of these cycles is often hard to anticipate, but we all hope to end up as a better person that who we were when we started. I think that a lot of people get stuck in grief and sadness and I think that there is an addictive quality to these emotions which tempts people away from happiness. I think that this addictive quality is based in the simple fact that when you are sad you feel like you have nothing to lose. There is a thrilling quality to this emotion and I have felt it myself. When you are unbearably sad you feel unquestionably alive and vital and the world seems like a terrible place, but an expansive place and a place of limitless potential. When you are sad you think of all the ways you could be happy, and this is an easy and effortless process.

Happiness, on the other hand, is a much scarier and more frustrating state of being. When you are happy, it is hard to ignore the gaping chasms beneath you. When you are happy, it is hard to summon the energy to continue to improve yourself each and every day. Emotions plateau and these plateaus are often mistaken for peaks, and the downhill spiral becomes ever more tempting. I have wallowed in grief and I have known people who wallow in grief and I believe that it is one of the toughest addictions to break and perhaps it is impossible for certain people in certain situations and that this sadness, this victim-complex, this urge to look at the world from the bottom-up with eyes twitching hatred and confusion, this delightful and damning state of being becomes a constant state of being and the world shifts to accommodate this new perspective and everything becomes relative to the grief. And I think that someone people forget about their childhoods and lose the dreams of their future selves. 

Here's a photograph I took at Mammoth Caves National Park:

Back to basics

In a few short days I'll be starting another school year. I've been a student almost my entire life, and a teacher for the last three years. Despite this, I know very little about the process of learning, and what I do know is biased heavily by my own experiences and preferences. However, there are a few truths that I have found to be (and I hope you'll agree with me) universal and objective. Here's one: Learning comes as a result of failure.

For example, when learning how to ride a motorcycle I failed pretty heavily and rammed myself into the side of a dumpster. I was twelve at the time. Now I feel very confident and I doubt that I would run into the side of a dumpster unless I was heavily incentivized in some way.

Learning by failure applies not only to specific skills but also determines the shape that our world view takes.

For example, after numerous abject emotional disasters I have developed a sense of my own values as well as a sense of the values of the people that I meet. This sense did not appear overnight, nor is it the product of good intentions or positive emotional experiences. It is only through pain, loss, anxiety, stress, and fear that I have come to realize what is important to me. These notions are flexible and changing but their range of movement is ever shortening. As we grow older, our ability to learn new things diminishes. I am aware of this happening in myself, I occasionally stumble upon artifacts of my own mental pathways locking into place. It makes me fearful and I am also scared because I observe this freeze-drying process happening in the brains of the people that I know.

During the last month I have read the following books:

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
White Fang by Jack London
Wonder Boys by Michael Chobin
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

They were all great in their own ways, and I felt like I was journeying with some of the characters, especially as I completed my own road trip across the Eastern US (the photographic evidence of which will be scattered on this blog starting now and lasting, I would imagine, for quite some time into the future).

Now I'm finishing Anna Karenina. On my Kindle. I started this book eighteen months ago and was convincing myself that I was smart enough, mature enough, and perhaps dull enough to enjoy it. Yes, I was just on the verge of this wonderful transformation when my Kindle shut down and refused resuscitation. Last week I resurrected my Kindle and picked up where I left off. I was momentarily lost in the dizzy array of Russian surnames and also disoriented by the frenetic emotional roller coaster that all of the characters seem to be permanently strapped in to. But soon enough I recovered and my sense of familiarity with the plot returned and now I'm back to convincing myself that I can honestly enjoy this book. Back to convincing myself that this is not just entertaining but relevant to my life. Not just the story of disaffected members of the Russian social elite, but an expansive and elaborate survey of the emotional wreckage that often follows great romances. I remain unconvinced.


Here is a photograph I took of a sand dune near Lake Michigan:

Decay

I finish all of my work in this class so quickly. It's easy work and I tell myself that it takes everyone else longer to complete it because they are less efficient workers. This is probably true, but not the whole truth, because there is another slight only partial truth: I work quickly because I do not care about the work. I can write an essay in minutes if its on a topic I care nothing for. It's the things that pique my interest and provoke me on some personal level, those are the things that take time to think about and to write about. Sometimes they take so long to think about that I get lost in the thinking and never get to the writing. I am convinced the writing is an essential compliment to the thinking and that one without the other leaves the mind with an open ended gaping wound on one end which can be filled quickly and quietly without you ever noticing and soon your forget that you were provoked in the first place.

I finished my work and I then I finished my book. I only had a handful of pages left and I didn't finish it last night. I'm not entirely sure why. I could have. The book, The Winter of Our Discontent, was almost finished, as I said, only a handful of pages left. I dog-eared it in the way I have been doing since I was eight years old, in the way that still feels new to me, as if I can't believe how clever I am to save my page without a bookmark, a childish fascination with childish ingenuity. I closed the book and placed it on my nightstand and I closed the blinds on the window and turned off the light in that empty room and it was very dark, like the bedrooms I remember from my youth. I sat in the dark in the cold sheets and I wept.

I woke up this morning and rode my motorcycle to class instead of taking the shuttle bus with the other students. A thunderstorm had rolled in the previous night, although I did not hear it, and when I turned off the main street onto the winding country road, a thick fog hang low in the trees and over the old houses, the remains that the storm had left behind like dying soldiers on a battlefield left by a retreating army. I imagined that there was Spanish moss hanging from the branches of the trees overhead, it was a Spanish moss type of fog.

After I finished my work this morning, I took out my book and finished that. I think I procrastinated the finishing of the book because I was scared of the ending. It was a good book, maybe the best book I've ever read, but I cannot say for sure.  The ending was probably nothing worthy of being scared of, but i was scared of it anyway and as I read it I felt my horror grow and grow and then slightly change and when I read the last line the horror wasn't there anymore and was replaced by the empty but powerful feeling in my stomach that I get whenever I finish a good book. The feeling of looking out over a lifeless immeasurable distance, the feeling of recognizing, with brief clarity, and only for a moment, the scope of my own life and its scale when weighed against the lives of all the people I have met and all the places I have been and yet been.

Here's a picture of the book because why the hell not.

Repair guide

I'm in Maryland, on a two-week professional development seminar in which I get to perform all variety of advanced science experiments and then reflect on the challenges that my students might face in performing those same tasks. Here's a reflection that I wrote two days ago, concerning a research project focused on the history of a biomedical innovation. I was assigned the toothbrush.

Reflection

In searching through PubMed and Google Scholar for journal articles on the biomedical innovation of my choice (the toothbrush), I encountered several issues which may be an obstacle for my students in completing their own research. First and foremost: search domain. The toothbrush is, not surprisingly, a rather common place object and is found as a tangential reference in an almost innumerable number of research articles. Think the toothbrush might not play a central role in modern scientific investigations? Think again. The toothbrush is everywhere. I was shocked. Flabbergasted, even. But determined to succeed, I strove onwards. I dived deeper into the ever-darkening layers of research, stumbling blindly through articles of increasing intellectual complexity, past heat-treatments of bristle nylon, brushing away hanging studies of the effectiveness of counter-stroking in removing plaque, narrowly avoiding the pitfalls of stess-tests on newly developed thermoplastics, before finally arriving at the deepest, darkest, and most convoluted toothbrush-related topic: strategies for microbial disinfectant. The destination reedeemed the journey. Here was the golden chalice of knowledge, held high above the glowing pewter altar of thesis defenses, shining brightly down on the grumbling, slithering, irrelevant malignancies of the undergraduate research world. Microbial disinfectant. Even now, my heart beats rapidly in excitement at the sound of those syllables; those ever smooth constants draped in the senseless and endless finery of vowels as smooth and forbidden as mother's silk gabardine. Microbial disinfectant. Surely this was the destination I had dreamed of, the draft that would satisfy my seemingly unquenchable toothbrush thirst.

But I was not the challenger to be. I was not the one assigned the heavy mantle of responsibility, not the carrier of the streaming standard of research and inquest, hoisted high above the flaming fields of academic ignorance and inevitable financial insolvency. No, I was the fervent lieutenant shouting words of encouragement across the trenches to those noble few whose obligation was absolute, whose task was clear: my students. It was they who would have to trudge through the increasing horrors of PubMed, following the thin trail of toothbrush bread-crumbs which narrowed in places to a knife's edge. How would they fare? How could they survive such calamity?

Again, the answer is domain. “Toothbrush” is too general, too vague. The jungle is too vast, and the search party too tiny. What they have in courage, they more than neutralize with their poor vocabulary skills, pitiful research experience, and predilection for distraction. They will take one step into the vast abyss and then retreat, their eyes searching wildly for some Drake-related succor, their hands fumbling blindly for their phones. No, the search would need to be narrowed to something far more specific. To ensure success, my students would need to focus on a specific aspect of the toothbrush (the handle or the bristles) and by focusing their efforts thus exponentially magnify their individual strengths.

To this, I will give them a special, secret, and additional weapon. Forged in the hot embers of the faculty lounge, I will give them: keywords. By including terms such as “biomedical”, “medical”, “health”, or “safety”, the path would be made smoothers, the dangers of the journey further tamed. These words would push the darkness away from the journeymen, and save our sacred fellowship. I know this, for I have tried myself.

It is with these strategies that I will aid my students in conquering that unknowable fear. The ominous and grating fear. The fear that resides deep in their hearts, and also in my own. The fear of PubMed.

Here's a picture of my bike at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike:

Rage is back

I'm finally on summer vacation. It's been an unusual yet relaxing transition, from work to vacation. The final day of school for students and most teachers was eight days ago. I volunteered to come back every day this week for a few hours to work with a student who had missed a large segment of the semester due to a broken leg. Our school is not equipped with elevators, and my classroom is located on the third floor. She broke her leg in February, had reconstructive surgery in March, and was only cleared to walk up stairs on the third week of June. Crazy, huh? Well she is a really smart student, so I didn't mind coming in to teach her. Basically she ran her own experiments and worked on practice problems while I cleaned up my classroom and perused craigslist for used jeep cherokees.

My dad has a heart condition which worried my mother more than anyone else, mostly because my dad has a healthy distrust of doctors and probably doesn't take his own condition all that seriously. My mother loves doctors and hospitals and medical insurance. I thinks she sees in their bureaucratic complexities and excessive verbiage a sort of stability or safety. This is probably the same reason why she buys twice as many groceries every month as what we could possibly eat.

Anyway, my dad was excited to take his (mostly annual) summer trip to California. Usually he takes this trip by motorcycle, but my mom imposed her strong will on my dad and after lengthy coercion (she spoke with him once over dinner), convinced him to --- wait for it, because this gets good --- take his car. That's right. My mom convinced my dad, who views cars as a necessary but loathsome component of human living, to brush the dust of his old car and drive it to California.

I accompanied my dad to WalMart three weeks ago and helped him to buy his first smartphone. He had many questions, most of which were composite questions (unclear amalgamations with multiple worries, thoughts, and disjointed fragments stitched together in traditional Mr. Dad fashion), which I attempted to answer in as clear and precise of a manner as noisome and morally questionable environment of WalMart would allow me to do. He had spent the last two weeks sending me text message version of the ten minute rants he previously delivered over voice mail. I do not know if this is an improvement.

Halfway through the scheduled itinerary of his trip, my dad sent me a picture message of Mt. Rushmore. It was taken from a crazy angle, from the left and way way way beneath, so that the heads of the presidents appear tiny and in profile. At that angle my dad had effectively erased the presence of Theodore Roosevelt. I don't believe this was an intentional move on his part. Nevertheless, this picture message must have marked an important point in the trip for him, because he showed up back in town one week later, preceded by several days by a text message reading, and I so excitably quote, "All further points west have been canceled due to lack of enthusiasm driving automobiles." After spending twenty three years as a spectator to my dad's life, watching with incredulous fascination at his profound inability to flourish in the modern world, feeling not unlike a fan of the Detroit Lions watching the team play season after season while the city crumbles around them, I can honestly say for the first time that I know exactly what he is talking about.

I've been keeping up with my reading, in case you were wondering, although not to the extent of my friend Stephanie who has read over forty books this year. Forty books! I think I'm in the mid twenties, but I'm going to focus exclusively on small slim tomes for a few weeks and see what happens. I read Love, and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Lillies of the Field by William Edmund Barrett, and Rage is Back by Adam Mansbach. I liked the last one the best, and I think it inspired me to re-read some of my favorite books from past years. I'll keep you in the loop.

Here is a photograph I recently took of a non-living dinosaur:

Worth living.

Love is frightening and exhausting.
I am jealous of people and their memories.
Sometimes I wake up in a terror.
My heart is powerful.
I am aching for the people I have hurt.
I am aching for the person I used to be.
Do other people dream of underwater forests?
Do other people dream of abandoned museums?
Has my entire life has been the gaping two second window between the injury and the pain?

This American Life

I traveled to Boston for a music festival and had a great time. The bands were talented and the fans were passionate. The location of the festival was perfect because I was able to easily walk to some of the historic areas of Boston. My urge to explore has only grown stronger as I have grown older. Extrapolating this trend, I predict that my life will culminate in the role of a geriatic interstellar traveler.

The weather was beautiful during the festival and has been beautiful ever since. I am growing some kale and peppers in small pots in my backyard. The kale has sprouted; tiny green leaves with thin red spines in bunches of three and four. I will wait until they get bigger to transplant them to their final containers.

My reading has slowed during the last week because I borrowed a book from the library which I didn't really like. I have not found the motivation to return to the library and exchange it for something better. I did read a wonderful book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez two weeks ago, but I will wait to describe it here until I have read at least a handful of other books, lest I appear too single-minded in my focus.

Here's a photograph I recently took at Mystic Seaport in Mystic, CT, USA:

The time I sold my car

I decided to sell my car. It just wasn’t worth it, in my mind. The calculations were not in my favor. There were many things wrong with it and I did not have enough money to fix it. A strange creaking noise emanated from the rear suspension, stopping whenever I craned my neck to look. A failed emissions test and then a failed retest. I vacuumed the car in the hopes that a clean interior might prompt a magical mechanical recovery. Broken window theory, etc. No dice. The old problems continued, and were joined by a new one: the creeping sense that given enough time, the litany of mechanical problems afflicting the car might jump ship and begin affecting other components of my life.

I’m not a superstitious person. My mother is very superstitious. I think this is the reason why I am not superstitious. I am afraid that if I become superstitious that I will become more like my mother. I try not to think about it too much. The mechanic from the garage by the beach called me up. He was a really tall black man. In the shop earlier, I had considered telling him that, beach-side or not, I had never before seen such a tall black man working at a garage before. He had asked me where I was from and when I told him, he was interested.

“Do you know Tony Colon?”

“No.”

“What about Kendall Williams?”

“No, sorry.”

“When did you graduate high school?”

“Two thousand and eight.”

“Oh, so you might know Erica Stevitz.”

“Nope.”

I had never heard of these people before. I don’t remember many of the people I went to high school with, but I think that the utterance of their names would prompt some basic cognitive recall. Maybe these people weren't real.

I left the shop thinking about Erica Stevitz. Who was she? Was she beautiful? Was my life less full because I didn’t know Erica Stevitz from high school? What if Erica Stevitz was meant to be my friend, neighbor, co-worker, or lover? What if I was missing out all because of some seemingly inconsequential error in high school registration data. I got sent to this school and my destiny got sent over there.

I was riding a bicycle back from the garage. I brought the bicycle in the back of my car and dropped my car off at the garage, and now I was riding my bicycle back. This is great, I thought to myself. I love riding this bicycle. I should do this more often.

I didn’t make it halfway before the tall black man from the garage called me.

“This car is scrap. The bottom is all rusted out. I wouldn’t drive this myself, for safety reasons.”

I rode my bicycle back to the garage and inspected the car and I nodded in agreeance, very unsafe. I didn’t mention anything about not being able to afford a replacement car. It just didn’t seem like the right time.

I loved the tall black man, he was so personable. I wanted to be his friend and stay up late at night and watch movies with him. Not wanting to scare him off with my enthusiasm and friendliness, I left very abruptly, taking car to drive the car slowly over bumps in the road. Potholes that before seemed like harmless nuisances now took on a menacing demeanor.

It took me about three days to sell the car. I was surprised by this. I put the car on craigslist with a very straightforward advertisement. My best friend from college, John, is a very straightforward person, so I wrote the advertisement from his point of view. How would John describe my car? I listed the statistics in a clear and concise bullet point format. My impressions of the car? Unsafe to drive. Low miles. Good interior. I took eight high quality photographs as well as a video to show that the car started up without issue and that the motor was in good shape. I double checked my spelling and grammar.

There are a lot of advertisements on craigslist with poor spelling and grammar.

Apparently this is not completely reflective of the consumer demographic, because I had a lot of calls interested in the car and even though I told them it was unsafe to drive, several people came out to look at the car and offer me money for it.

Eventually I sold it to a short man named Shawn. Shawn drove up from New York City to look at the car and He had an easily excitable face; he was always smiling with such force that a small island of spittle existed permanently at the corners of his lips. He bought it on the spot and payed me $800 for it in cash. I made him promise me that he would fix it before driving it very hard. He promised he would. He returned a week later in a taxi-cab and picked the car up. I left the key with my brother to give to Shawn when he picked up the car, as I was still at work.

Now I ride to work on my motorcycle. Riding to work on a motorcycle is not bad at all. It is very fun and exciting, and keeps my mind focused in the mornings. Still, it is inconvenient to do with a motorcycle all of the things you used to do with a car. For example, I cannot pick up anyone at the train station anymore. I cannot buy more than a handful of groceries at a time. Riding to the gym is inadvisable because of all the riding gear that I need to store away while exercising, so now I just walk or take my bicycle to the gym.

I tried to listen to music while riding. The earphones got caught on the inside of my helmet because they protrude every so slightly. In addition to being physically painful, listening to music is a nuisance in other ways. Volume, for one. I can’t adjust the volume of the music while riding nor can I change a song if I don’t like it. So I stopped listening to music. Instead I wear foam ear plugs to protect my ears from the roar of the engine and the high-pitched whistle of wind on the highway. Someone recently asked me, do you get bored when you ride the bike, especially on long trips? I said no. I said it was nice to be alone with my thoughts, which was not a lie.

Here's a photograph I recently took of my little brother's beagle, named Ollie.

Wishes, observations, and a review

I wish I was a master gardener.
I wish I knew all the best fishing spots.
I wish I knew more knots.
I wish I talked less.
I wish I loved more deeply and with less thought.
I wish I remembered more from the books I read.
I wish I read more poetry.
I wish I wrote more letters.
I wish I kept up with old professors.

My observation is that the nexus of my hypocrisy lies mainly in my inability to conquer my own materialism whilst simultaneously espousing a minimalist, anti-consumerist agenda.

In other words, I wish I bought less stuff. Happiness comes from experiences and interactions with loved ones, facilitated by a simple set of belongings which exhibit a set of practical and aesthetic characteristics in keeping with the personality of the belonger-to.

I also recently finished reading a book entitled A Sense of Ending by Julian Barnes. It was a really good book, and the ending shocked me in a way that I've come to associate more with movies than books. It's hard for the plot of a book to sneak up on you, I think, but this one did. Quite a good read!

I also recently finished reviewing my ex-girlfriend's thesis project for her Master's Degree in Epidemiology. Really more of a formality than anything else, she had already submitted it, and she has been and will continue to be much smarter than me anyway. Just like letting an old dog bark and pretend to be tough, it's good to allow outdated people to exercise their old tendencies. I found almost zero problems with it, but I did notice one detail which made me smile. When a city was named, the state and country were named after. So it would go; City, State, USA. Except it was the same city, state, and country every time. So the paper was full of USA. I laughed.

Here's a photograph I took at Shenandoah National Park, VA, USA:

Resolutions Pt. 2

I've read 16 books in 18 weeks. I've fallen behind in my goal to read one book a week. I blame this on Catch 22, which was approximately 5,500 pages long.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Pastoralia by George Saunders
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
A Raisin in the Sun  by Lorraine Hansberry
An Unfinished Season by Ward Just
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

On the plus side I'm cooking more food than I ever have before, I've put 2,000 miles on my motorcycle in the past month, and the sun persists until 6 or 7 at night.

Here's a photograph of a Mexican Wolf that I took during a recent trip with my family to a local zoo:

Touring on the F4i

The demilitarized zone

So this week I finished reading Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. It was a really good book, possibly one of the best books that I have ever read. Of course, I have felt that way about almost every book that I've read this year. Maybe I'm just reading more closely, appreciating these books at a more intimate level, because I've experienced a more complete and nuanced sampling of the life-grinding-thought-crushing type of emotional trauma which seems to be a necessary precursor to all great fiction. I don't know for sure. I also read Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Also a good book.

If everything works out, I'll be graduating with my Master Degree and teaching certificate in just a few more short weeks.  Cue generic comments on the passing of time, etc. etc.


Here's a photograph of some peach cobbler that I made recently:

The way things are

My life was very different two years ago. My life was also very different one year ago. I'm happier now than I have been in a long time. Every once in a while, I feel pangs of sadness that are so sharp that they leave me breathless. Every once in a while, I wish I was who I used to be when I could be anything I wanted to be. Growing up is tough, but looking back is even harder.

I remember late-setting New England suns and fresh lobster and making dinner reservations for the first time. I remember losing my car keys for the first time. I also remember the first night I spent with a girl and how it seemed like I might never wake up because who could ask for more, etc.

I remember when I used to go an entire day without saying a single word. I remember feeling powerful.

Here's a photograph I took of Lake Champlain (frozen over), from the shore of Burlington, VT.

The broken watch

I thought that my watch broke, and my heart stopped. It wasn't really broken, I was able to fix it later, but in that moment I felt real panic. I've been riding my motorcycle a lot lately, so I have had some experience with this notion of real panic. It feels like nothing at all. As if all of your hopes and fear, ambitions and memories, everything that rely on as you build your life, simple evaporates underneath you. You feel nothing at all, just the sensation of perilous free fall, without any direction or mooring. You become keenly aware of your present situation and start to document everything with extreme categorical prejudice. I'm convinced that this an evolutionary trait. In times of danger or extreme stress or grief, we lose our ability to rationally consider things within the context of time or other people, and focus more on short-term, tactical realities. When I'm on the highway, and a large truck passes me, I feel true panic when the wind gust blows me around. I felt this way when I thought that my watch broke. Specifically, the leather strap snapped off. I examined it closely. This watch is cursed, by the way, this is not the first time something has gone wrong with it. I wear this watch everyday. I know every part of it. The glass faced is deeply scratched, a history of where I've been and the things that I've bumped into. A few stitches are colored differently, a testament to a red bic pen which was my salvation during an excruciatingly boring meeting. The watch is cursed but its my watch. My heart stopped when I thought it broke. I think that the reason lies in the memories associated with it. Fresh snow fall underneath sodium lights. Waiting outside a door with a quiet campus stretching in shallow slumber behind me. A rough area rug and a set of blue sheets turned over. I've been so many places and I've done so many things and most of them seem like dreams.

To commemorate the coming of spring, here is a photograph of a flowering tree that my Dad took almost two years ago:

Resolutions

So far one of my New Year's resolutions has worked out beautifully. I have vowed to read one book a week during this year, and I'm trying to fill these weeks with books that I believe comprise an integral part of the American literary complex. Books by famous authors and also less well known but still well renowned authors. I braced myself for the effect that this resolution would have on my wallet. I bought a handful of books to start. What I have discovered is that I have enjoyed reading books even more when I do not own them. For some reason, I have found that reading books that I have borrowed from friends or from my local public library is a much more satisfying and engaging experience. Why? Who knows. Maybe because I value the experience for its impermanence. Or maybe I get a pernicious thrill from dog-earing pages I haven't paid for. Either way, I've slowly but steadily read one book a week this year so far. Let's see if I can remember the books that I have read:

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Pastoralia by George Saunders
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (couldn't finish it, hated it, not even American, I don't feel bad)
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
A Raisin in the Sun  by Lorraine Hansberry
An Unfinished Season by Ward Just
Beloved by Toni Morrison (currently reading)

My other New Year's resolution is to visit at least one state this year that I have never been too before. My tentative plan is to travel to Shenandoah National Park with my dad or by myself and along the way visit West Virginia. I hope to do this by motorcycle. Obviously this has not yet occurred due to a lack of warm weather and my work obligations. But I'm hoping to do it as soon as possible. I have spent a lot of time riding this winter and yesterday celebrated a bout of unexpectedly good weather by riding with my dad up to a local reservoir. Here's a photo of my dad standing next to both of our bikes:

Thoughts on teaching

Teaching is the strangest job I've ever had. I've only been alive for twenty-three years so far, but currently it's in the number one spot. Certainly much stranger than cleaning viruses off computers, punching tickets at an IMAX theater, or organizing chemicals at a science summer camp. Those last three were in reverse chronological order, for the sake of traditional plot development. Of course, I've also had odd jobs and side jobs and I've shoveled a lot of driveways, but it doesn't matter. Nothing comes close. Teaching is the strangest. Moreover, I would reckon that none of the jobs that I have held or work that I have performed has prepared me at all to be a teacher. I'm good with computers, I can keep track of humans exiting into and out of buildings, and I suppose organizing chemicals is probably a useful skill for any science teacher. But certainly nothing I have ever done has ever prepared me to teach.

Probably the least useful thing I ever did was student teach. In terms of preparing me. Absolutely awful. Worst choice ever, although in my defense I didn't really have too much of a say about it. I'll never forget the first time I stepped into a New York City Public School classroom. The school was in Harlem and it was named after some champion of the civil rights movement. I was amazed. The school was incredible. The floors were gleaming, the lockers and doors were brand new, and the paint on the walls was fresh and clean. The whole building seemed a testament to the successful strategy of educational reform. Oh my goodness, I thought. The money works.

The kids were awful, of course, very disrespectful, but I liked them anyway. Of course I liked them. They're entertaining and amusing, and they made me feel like an adult, which means a lot when you're twenty one years old and entering a profession you are convinced that you are unqualified for. But the biggest factor at play in determining how much I enjoyed that experience was the complete lack of responsibility I had for those students and for their learning. Their teacher was awful. Again, easy for me to say, because I had absolutely no stake in how that classroom turned out. I doled out judgement. I will never be like that teacher. Two years later? Yes, she was awful. But I have a better understanding of why she was the way she was.

You see, teaching is an inherently degrading job, and destructive, yes, very destructive. Because you cannot teach and remain unchanged. And most people enter the profession at such a young age that they have not yet established a firm and stable understanding of who they are as well as respect and pride for their own sense of identity. It is easy to change and adapt and give up part of yourself to fit into the role of being a teacher. No two teachers are the same, because no two teaching environments are the same, however, I firmly believe that all educators are linked by the shared experience of having to MODIFY themselves to fit this new and terribly different situation. And sometimes modify themselves to the point of destruction.

You cannot teach and remain unchanged. You simply can't. The best you can hope for is to teach and become a better person. A lot of it is out of your control. Teaching is a gamble. Maybe the students are horrible, maybe your administration is horrible, maybe your building or neighborhood is horrible. Maybe you're overworked or you're teaching the wrong subject or you don't have the right materials or textbooks. It is a hard job. And many teachers fall into the trap of focusing all of their attention on the things they cannot change, yearning for better times or better people, etc. It is all really quite depressing.

I try not to complain about my job, because I really do like it. Will I do it for the rest of my life? I really don't know. What I can say for sure is that my experience as a teacher, and my goals and expectations for the future, are radically different than those of teachers working only ten years ago. They would probably pass as completely alien to the teachers of fifty years ago. Because the children are different. And the world that we are funneling them into is different. There are no easy answers, and certainly no one-size-fits-all solutions. My advice? Don't forget about yourself. I do whatever I can to make my job easier because it is a hard job and I do not want to wake up one day and wonder where my own life went. It disappears when you're not paying attention. And it is easy to forget to pay attention when you are so worried about the lives of fifty or seventy or a hundred teenagers.

The one thing about teaching that I can say with absolute certainty, in terms of advice, etc., is to never call a student out in front of their friends. I fight the urge to humiliate students who I feel are disruptive or disrespectful. I am so fortunate that this happens very rarely in my current job. But when you call someone out in front of their friends, you embarrass them and you burn any bridge that may have existed between the two of you. Turning the other cheek is an essential skill. I am horrified by the teachers who punish students, not to teach a lesson but simply to reward hurt with more hurt. I try not to judge. Teaching has made me a better person. I am grateful for this, but also dreadfully aware of the fragility of this experience.

This post is unusual because it is not creative writing, nor is it particularly funny or even remotely interesting to whoever may be reading my blog. I will follow this up with a copy of a customer review I recently submitted to an online retailer concerning a pair of wonderful winter-time riding gloves. I'm particularly fond of this review, and perhaps I've taken a distasteful amount of pride in sharing it, but I feel like its style hearkens back to the days of my OLD blog, and reminds me of when I was younger. I did write it at 5:30 in the morning. Maybe I'm younger in the mornings.

Here is a photo of the new motorcycle that I purchased back in January. It hasn't been above 40 since I bought it, but I've put over 200 miles on it so far! Hence the gloves.

Rukka Lobster Gore-Tex Glove

Did you know that Native Americans refused to eat lobsters, because they considered them to be vile and distasteful creatures? At first glance a lobster might look pretty alien and hideous, but it only takes a bit of boiling and some butter to appreciate the fact that it is an edible treat that you can only afford once a year when your mother in law comes to visit.

So too with this glove.

At first glance, this glove looks like inedible garbage. But who cares what a glove looks like? Let me tell you (and foregoing all of my customary hyperbole), this baby wraps your hands in a layer of Goretex, Cotton, and other insulating fibers so thick that you could be forgiven for believing that you had momentarily been transported back into the protective, warm, comforting embrace of your mother's uterus.

This glove is basically a one-way air plane ticket for you hands. Destination? Hawaii, probably. St. Thomas, maybe, although I've heard its expensive. Regardless, somewhere warm and tropical, where the idea of sleet, rain, snow, ice, and sub-freezing temperatures is regarded as myth and furtively whispered to truculent children as a warning before bedtime. Your hands will feel transported, and the experience is ethereal.

You know what else is ethereal? Grip feel. This is where the marvelous fairy tale of this story begins to take a dark turn. I won't go so far as to say that this glove interferes with your ability to control the bike in the same sense that miscommunication cost Hitler the Eastern Front. I'm just saying that Stalingrad in winter is never a good idea. Specifically? Turn signals. Your bike may be different than mine, but it's not, all bikes are the same, you know it, I know it, so let's skip the formalities and get to the part where you're freaking out because you can't cancel your left turn signal while pulling your clutch owing to the fact that the entire tip of your left thumb has been turned into an amorphous blob of protoplasmic inarticulation not dissimilar in form and function to our old friend, Vice President Dick Cheney.

But don't worry, you'll get used to it and adapt. Some of your movements will become cartoonish and exaggerated to compensate. For example, instead of casually flicking your indicator switch you will stretch and contort your thumb over and around the top to ensure complete control and tactile response. This glove yields grudgingly to human ingenuity and in the end, like a well-bred mastiff, behaves more docile during your second encounter.

And who has the time or energy to worry about peripheral losses in glove feel when your hands feel so comfortable and warm? If you're thinking about buying this glove, than you MUST have tried riding in cold weather without it. Which means right now your thought processes are evenly split between, "What does WebMD know about frostbite anyway? It's just a website. The internet can't be trusted. I remember Napster..." and "Maybe I'm just a fair weather rider like my father-in-law."

Trust me, anonymous internet stranger. You are not your father-in-law. And with this glove, you shouldn't have to worry about frost bite until the thermometer dips below freezing. At that point, it doesn't matter if your speedometer is in miles-per-hour, or kilometers-per-kumquat, the number "60" on your dash is going to translate to "numb fingertips" in about 30 minutes.

Have I ridden farther with this glove in colder temperature. You're better believe I have. I'm a champion of all-weather motorcycle riding. I'm the guy that you dream about being. I'm the guy who wears GLOVE LINERS underneath his gloves. Because you know what's worse than numb fingertips? "I told you so" conversations with your mother-in-law at Red Lobster.

An Unfinished Season

After a whirlwind weekend in Vermont, and the completion of two short books ("The Old Man and the Sea" and "A Raisin in the Sun") I began to read a book on the recommendation of a close friend: "An Unfinished Season" by Ward Just. On the cover, in small font, it said "Pulitzer Prize nominated". My initial assessment was less than favorable. Really? This book? Pulitzer prize nominated? The book seemed stuffy and overbearing. Stuffy and overbearing are not exactly fatal descriptors when it comes to my reading preferences, see "The Untouchables" and "The Marriage Plot" as recent examples, however this book seemed especially banal and, moreover, meandering.

But it wasn't meandering at all! And once I picked up the path and direction of the book, my pace quickened and tonight, as I sat on the 8:13PM New Haven Express train out of Harlem, I read the last twenty pages both hungrily and regretfully, knowing with each turn that I was closer to the end of an unforgettable journey. Sounds cliche right? Well put your seat belt on, because here comes another: this book had a profound effect on me. It was beautiful, even if, at times, it felt slightly confused and took unnecessary detours. It was a novel about growth, and essentially distilled the "coming of age" of a young man down to a series of connected moments spread out throughout the course of a pre-collegiate summer. This is always the way that I have suspected that people grow up. Not over the course of several years but over the course of several moments.

Here is a photo I took of some of my students on a field trip to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in November of 2013:

Firewood

I think that you can tell a lot about a person by the way in which they start a fire. There are many different ways to start a fire, but after lengthy observation and careful consideration, I believe that most everyone can be ascribed to one of two groups.

The first group is characterized by their overzealous usage of kindling as well as their poor long-term fire planning. How will your fire survive when you have used up all of the smaller pieces of firewood? This is an example of a question which seldom crosses the mind of a member of the first group. And, if it does, it is always accompanied by a simultaneous feeling of melancholy and quiet disappointment. Like a child that opens its Christmas presents too quickly, these people are often interested more in the short-term satisfaction of a burgeoning fire. The flare and beauty of the blazing kindling captivates and satisfies, although it is inherently ephemeral.

The second group, of course, is more interested in the long term health of the fire. They will use kindling sparingly, not only because they are more chiefly concerned with the arrangement of larger pieces of firewood, but also because they have a desire to use all resources in moderation. These are types of people who print all of their recipes for the week and then go to the grocery store to only buy the ingredients that they need.

No one belongs exclusively to either group, and it is possible to change camps during one's lifetime and even, perhaps, yes almost certainly, to change multiple times.

This is a metaphor.

Look at this Christmas Tree that we set on fire!

Oversea Highway

So this year I have two major resolutions. The first is to read one book every week, for a total of 52 books by the end of the year. I was inspired by a similar, but more challenging resolution made by a close friend of mine: to read 100 books by the end of the year. 52 is not 100, but it is still a respectable number. So far, I have been staying on schedule, and I am currently reading book number #5 (although I have experimented by reading sections of other books). Here's my completed list so far, with accompanying reviews (5 words maximum).

1) Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy: Beautiful but bleak, enjoyable, and troubling.

2) Pastoralia by George Saunders: Poignant, bursting with rhetorical questions.

3) Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders: Funnier than Pastoralia, strangely sadder.

4) Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger: Insightful, lots of cigarettes.

I feel exceptionally proud that I was able to shave an extra word down on that last review.

Here is a photograph I took of the Flagler Presbyterian Church in St. Augustine, Florida:

Silas watches the Pawnee scouts depart

Silas was angry and he did not know why. The Pawnee scouts had disappeared the night before, and there was much speculation about where they had gone. Elijah thought they were riding hard toward the camps of the enemy. The party knew of these camps, crouching, rimmed with embers, hidden beyond the shadowy veil of the horizon. Others thought they were pushing forward, towards a scrubby line of evergreens in the distance, sandy soil, perhaps clean water. Still others were convinced that they had been swallowed whole by that unfathomable western land, a terrestrial deity greater and more mysterious than any lingering in the skies of the old world. Silas had watched them depart during the night. Tall and lanky, their sheepskin shawls pushed up around their shoulders, the smooth brown skin of their backs twisting in the neurotic light of the moon. Their horses shuffled uncertainly and seemed to topple forward, gaining momentum, unshorn hoofs scraping over the dead Nebraska long grass until they were dots in a darkening expanse. Silas was half-crouched, his body tensed. To do what? He shut his mouth and swallowed, tasting grit. He breathed through his nose, and slipped back under his blanket. He closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of horse sweat and gunpowder.

Winter in Queens

Winter in Queens. I stand in the underground station, waiting for the F train. The world outside is bright and clear and the people of Queens stand apart, each made slightly larger by several layers of clothing. I used to stand at the edge of the tracks but there have been a number of train-related deaths recently, so I'm cautious. Last week a hispanic woman pushed an Indian man in front of a train. She thought he was a terrorist. I keep my eyes open for unstable women behind me. My mother would be glad to know that I don't stand close to the edge anymore. I should probably call her and tell her about the train-related deaths.

I'm listening to music, my headphones are banded over my winter hat, the wool scrapes against the ear pieces. In front and beneath me scraps of plastic and discarded food loiter next to iron stanchions. From the stair case a fetid wind blows and I breathe through my mouth. The garbage on the tracks begins to slowly move, pushed along by the wind and for a moment imitating the movement of sentient particles anticipating the imminent train. I shove my hands deeper into my pockets, I strain the seams. A blonde presence at my right elbow.

Turning, I look at her face and she is already looking at me and smiling. She smiles wide and her face looked tired and her smile is shaped in such a way that I am convinced it is genuine in this moment but is forced in most other moments. A smile that has been used in jest so many times in the past. That's okay, I have one of my own. I smile my sideways smile. The one where I show only a small sliver of my top teeth. I know all of this about myself. Hey, how are you? My headphones are still on.

We are sitting on the F train together and we are talking about work. She sits with her boots pointed slightly toward each other and her arms crossed and her upper body twisted slightly to face me. Everything we say is sarcastic, and I try to make her laugh. She has a habit of not looking me in the eyes, but looking slightly above. I wonder if I have something on my forehead.

We both stay on the train longer than we need to. I am late to my class in the Bronx. I think she is late to wherever she is going, but I am not sure. The air smells better in the Bronx. Dominican boys walk with Dominican girls, always in pairs. On my way to class, I pass the empanada trailer. This has been an immovable landmark since I moved to New York six months ago. Inside, swarthy faced women with kind eyes cook with their backs to the window. Red tubes of ketchup and hot sauce stand as frozen sentries on either side of the metal window. I shove my hands deeper into my pockets.

Here's a photograph I recently took of a cathedral: