I'm so sorry that I've been missing. Today I found that my head was so crowded with unaired thoughts that it was all I could do not to scream them out, inchoate and incomprehensible. Instead I ate a chocolate-cherry Godiva chocolate bar and bought a copy of The Help.
Dearest readers, I love teaching, but lately I find myself to be just exhausted. It takes all of my energy to arise in the morning and even more to remain upright all day (without betraying to my students that, in fact, their teacher is a mess of nerves and stress). I want my life to be Glee, full of teachable moments but without teacher burnout (and with plenty of Mr. Schuester kisses-- I'm in love with a fictional character).
It was my birthday last weekend (well, the weekend before last), and my best friends surprised me with a flight to DC to spend my birthday with my soulmates. We spent nights cuddling and eating delicious food and drinking champagne-- imbibing and thriving. Sunday we went to brunch where they had a dazzling dime-store-variety candy buffet! I'm taking malted milk balls, Pixie Stix, caramels, Tootsie Rolls, Necco Wafers...Eastern Market followed, where my friends bought fresh ravioli and I acquired a chartreuse cocktail ring. On the plane ride home I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society-- a new favorite! It reminded me of another cherished tome, 84 Charing Cross Road.
With a St. Louis trip having occurred the week before (and being entirely glorious), returning to reality and the work accompanying it has proven...daunting, for lack of a better word. I keep trying to tell myself I'm happy, and overall, I am. It's just that I miss knowing my community, having places where I can settle with a chai latte and a book and stay for hours (Kaldi's even has containers of Red Hots affixed to the wall, and we all know about my love of chandeliers in unexpected places).
I miss creperies and walking from place to place (peripatetic, poetic, and chic) and stately homes behind wrought-iron gates.
"Cause what if I'm a mermaid
In these jeans of his
With her name still on it
Hey, but I don't care
Cause sometimes
I said sometimes
I hear my voice
And it's been here
Silent all these years..."
"Give to me your leather...
Take from me, my lace..."
"Yet Irina had once tucked away, she wasn't sure when or why, that happiness is almost definitionally a condition of which you are not aware at the time. To inhabit your own contentment is to be wholly present, with no orbiting satellite to take clinical readings of the state of the planet. Conventionally, you grow conscious of happiness at the very point that it begins to elude you. When not misused to talk yourself into something - when not a lie - the h-word is a classification applied in retrospect. It is a bracketing assessment, a label only decisively pasted onto an era once it is over."
~lionel shriver, the post-birthday world~
"See us winter walking after the storm
It's chill in the wind
But it's warm in your arms..."
2 comments:
Glee can be very unrealistic sometimes, the teachers never actually teach haha. I hope you feel less burned out
I can relate to how you're feeling now. I remember going abroad to study in grad school and thinking the whole world was in front of me, only to realize how much I missed what I'd had before I left.
Your weekend with your friends sounds wonderful. Sigh, a buffet filled with chocolate and candy. It sounds like something out of a wonderful dream:) Oh and I recently saw the film version of 84 Charing Cross Road and loved it. I didn't realize it was a book; I'll have to find it in my local library.
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