Sorry, little ones...
didn't mean to disappoint with a slight hiatus from the Third Book of Samuel. Writing Torah is tough work, and this young prophet has lost his vision. Unfortunately.
I am starting to miss Israel. I really liked it there. It's weird, but...well, I'm weird. I felt at home in whackyland. Since coming home, I've pretty much been a nervous wreck. Of course, I ran out of medication (Wellbutrin) in Israel, and while it was fine for a time, it's less fine now. A friend of mine had some on hand from before when she was taking it, and made a generous contribution to my sanity or the general appearance of such. Thanks. So basically, my trip down to Atlanta was more of a drug-run. I did manage to squeeze in some pontifical parental linguistic enlightenment for the benefit of young deaf children. Not that this will mean anything to most of you, but I seriously was impressed with how far I've come as an instructor in my ability to explain complicated things simply and get inside the heads of my students to help them sort out confusion.
Anyway - after a rather long, intimate reunion with the Atlanta airport as my flight crew was stranded in Alabama and I was grounded due to T-storms, I did finally make it back home at 2AM.
Looking at my mail makes me lightheaded and short of breath. I seriously feel like that Verizon commercial where there's this mass of people following the person on the phone as their "network." Only, I don't have a phone (as most of you know), and these tag-alongs are not my network, rather a cloud of CO2 producing obligations with account numbers and (800) numbers which convene and conspire to dilute my enthusiasm for life and inspire more firey stunts from high places. (not that I've ever done a firey stunt from a high place)
I am looking forward to school starting. I really am. Someone remind me of this sometime in the second week of December.
Life feels like it's falling apart. Life feels like it's coming together. Love feels distant. Love feels imminent. Freedom seems like a useless abstraction - like someone's pointing up into the sky and shouting at me "There!" I look. I trace the vector carefully from the fingertip outward - but what should be a line, direct - point to point, is more like a cone. Only the starting point is precise and identifiable. "There! becomes an expansive base of possibilities and beyond from any of these I could look back and say, "Yes, there it is. That's the line. I see it now." But only looking back. Looking ahead, I know only direction - there is no visible destination. What's more is that each step "toward" is made with the assumption that I'd want to go there if I knew where I was going. What if, what if, I get there and it's nothing more than a place to sit and missing the starting-line? What then? When I was young, I felt like an adult and would have jumped through any hoop to win a place as peer among the adults. As I "become" an adult, the battle reverses. If there was only some way to convince the young that I too am youthful yet. If there was only some way to remember that the old, convalescent on the bench outside the sliding doors of the nursing home is no different. We experience - whatever that means. Experience is not simply showing up, but being present, and reflecting on what happens afterwards. We claim that our experience amounts to wisdom, and maybe it does. Often we dishonestly count for Wisdom what is better appraised as bitter retrospective counsel forced on the next generation. The authority of our tenure insists they walk a different route than we did lest they stumble on the same stones. Or, we contradict with demands to trudge dutifully down the roads we ourselves paved lest they enjoy what we could not or shame us with the discovery of a shorter route. No matter what we call the quality which sprouts in response to years of calculated misery and chance vitality, it cannot fairly describe the elusive inner qualities we mean to invoke when we speak of our age. I'm getting older. As I age, I appreciate youth. Youth unappreciated - the youth of the young - is not the youth we long for. We long for youth which can enjoy its youthfulness. Growing old one apprehends his youth, remembers the salient simplicity of sandwhiches cut into squares, the magic of holidays, and the awe inspiring commonplace. One must grow old to grow young. Not all do. Of those that do, not many do so gracefully.
I am starting to miss Israel. I really liked it there. It's weird, but...well, I'm weird. I felt at home in whackyland. Since coming home, I've pretty much been a nervous wreck. Of course, I ran out of medication (Wellbutrin) in Israel, and while it was fine for a time, it's less fine now. A friend of mine had some on hand from before when she was taking it, and made a generous contribution to my sanity or the general appearance of such. Thanks. So basically, my trip down to Atlanta was more of a drug-run. I did manage to squeeze in some pontifical parental linguistic enlightenment for the benefit of young deaf children. Not that this will mean anything to most of you, but I seriously was impressed with how far I've come as an instructor in my ability to explain complicated things simply and get inside the heads of my students to help them sort out confusion.
Anyway - after a rather long, intimate reunion with the Atlanta airport as my flight crew was stranded in Alabama and I was grounded due to T-storms, I did finally make it back home at 2AM.
Looking at my mail makes me lightheaded and short of breath. I seriously feel like that Verizon commercial where there's this mass of people following the person on the phone as their "network." Only, I don't have a phone (as most of you know), and these tag-alongs are not my network, rather a cloud of CO2 producing obligations with account numbers and (800) numbers which convene and conspire to dilute my enthusiasm for life and inspire more firey stunts from high places. (not that I've ever done a firey stunt from a high place)
I am looking forward to school starting. I really am. Someone remind me of this sometime in the second week of December.
Life feels like it's falling apart. Life feels like it's coming together. Love feels distant. Love feels imminent. Freedom seems like a useless abstraction - like someone's pointing up into the sky and shouting at me "There!" I look. I trace the vector carefully from the fingertip outward - but what should be a line, direct - point to point, is more like a cone. Only the starting point is precise and identifiable. "There! becomes an expansive base of possibilities and beyond from any of these I could look back and say, "Yes, there it is. That's the line. I see it now." But only looking back. Looking ahead, I know only direction - there is no visible destination. What's more is that each step "toward" is made with the assumption that I'd want to go there if I knew where I was going. What if, what if, I get there and it's nothing more than a place to sit and missing the starting-line? What then? When I was young, I felt like an adult and would have jumped through any hoop to win a place as peer among the adults. As I "become" an adult, the battle reverses. If there was only some way to convince the young that I too am youthful yet. If there was only some way to remember that the old, convalescent on the bench outside the sliding doors of the nursing home is no different. We experience - whatever that means. Experience is not simply showing up, but being present, and reflecting on what happens afterwards. We claim that our experience amounts to wisdom, and maybe it does. Often we dishonestly count for Wisdom what is better appraised as bitter retrospective counsel forced on the next generation. The authority of our tenure insists they walk a different route than we did lest they stumble on the same stones. Or, we contradict with demands to trudge dutifully down the roads we ourselves paved lest they enjoy what we could not or shame us with the discovery of a shorter route. No matter what we call the quality which sprouts in response to years of calculated misery and chance vitality, it cannot fairly describe the elusive inner qualities we mean to invoke when we speak of our age. I'm getting older. As I age, I appreciate youth. Youth unappreciated - the youth of the young - is not the youth we long for. We long for youth which can enjoy its youthfulness. Growing old one apprehends his youth, remembers the salient simplicity of sandwhiches cut into squares, the magic of holidays, and the awe inspiring commonplace. One must grow old to grow young. Not all do. Of those that do, not many do so gracefully.
posted by gwistik at 11:27 AM
1 Comments:
um, hilary, i'm not naming any names, but if you called the Feds, not only would i have some 'splaining to do, but i would venture that whoever's name is on the nifty target bottle in my possession would have to weasel out alongside me - and while i am NOT going to name names out of respect for your privacy *cough* i would think twice about your masochistic respect for the law if i were you - errrr, if i were said unnamed pharmaceutically philanthropic individual!
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