MindSpinner

I just realized that this is the first anniversary of this blog, happily begun on June 30, 2005. Happy birthday, blog.

With apologies to Milton, no intentions of penning a sonnet, and only minimal blindness to complain of as opposed to the real thing, I would just like to take this opportunity to whine about how annoying it is to look back at a post and see that I’ve put an apostrophe before the “s” to form a plural, non-possessive noun.

I hate this appalling state of squintitude that comes with middle life.

My glasses often sit on the bedside table, not on my nose. I seldom put them on first thing in the morning, but read the news online without them instead, fighting to focus. I tell myself I’m exercising those middle-aged eye muscles so that they won’t become ever more stubbornly inefficient. They are becoming somewhat more stubbornly inefficient anyway, but I too am stubborn, spoiled by 40 years of 20-20 vision.

The words on the page begin as an impressionistic blur. In the meantime, reading has become a different experience, filled with moments of drama and wonder. I’ve begun to collect these.

Headlines shout “Killer tomatoes hit Tennessee.” For a split second, tomatoes the size of Volkswagons hail down upon the earth. I stare again with ferocious intensity: Tomatoes turn into tornadoes. I never thought there could be anything anticlimactic about a tornado, but there you have it.

A Google Ad touts listings for “Doctors and Medieval Jobs.” I picture my doctor standing before me with a jar full of leeches. Medieval. Medieval. Midlevel. Oh. But leeches are being used once more in modern medicine, a gruesomely fascinating practice, so I don’t quite discard the image. Moreover, though the actual tornadoes I read about hit Tennessee months and months ago, I can’t exorcise mental images of giant tomatoes pelting houses and cars and maybe occasionally a lackadaisical cow standing in a field.

Ten minutes or so into my exercise, I can see the small print on my laptop. It’s not perfectly clear, but it’s readable. (Fonts display smaller on Macs than they do on the PC you are likely staring at right now.) Proofreading remains a challenge in any case.

I know, I know. I could just wear those glasses all the time. (I do wear them often.) But then I’d really have no excuse.

A couple of months back, the family movie (a ritual fading to rarity these days) was indeed Donnie Darko. It was dark, weird, intriguing and compelling - definitely worth watching, probably twice because once isn’t enough to enable you to put all the pieces together and make sense of them.

My kids downloaded one song from its soundtrack, called “Mad World,” written by Gary Jules and performed by Tears for Fears. It’s a haunting song. There’s a certain age at which thoughtful teenagers come to see through institutions and absurdities and shrewdly assess what the future holds for them in the world as we’ve made it; moreover they come to recognize that institutions and absurdities (all too often being one and the same) frequently do not value them for the unique individuals that they are but only reward or dismiss them according to how well they measure up to expectations. They struggle to find psychologically safe and supportive places in which they can work out who they are and who they wish to become. This song reminds me of how rare those places can be and of how often school fails to be one of them. We’re so busy making students conformable to and functional in this world so that they can succeed in it that we can miss meeting them, knowing them, and valuing them for the inner lives that they lead. It’s those inner selves that need to breath in order to make their lives worth living.

Mad World

Verse
All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, Worn out faces
Bright and early for the daily races
Going nowhere, Going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, No expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, No tomorrow

Chorus
And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
These dreams in which I’m dying, Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it’s a very very
Mad World, Mad World

Verse
Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
And they feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, Sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, No one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what’s my lesson
Look right through me, Look right through me

Chorus
And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
These dreams in which I’m dying, Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it’s a very very
Mad World, Mad World

I’ve done it, you see, muddled through a hectic day and looked right through them, talked at them, processed their papers, thinking the day’s lesson was my object. What they needed most of all from me is that I should come to know them and to bring them lessons that can help them to live - to live deeply and authentically in an admittedly mad world (not forgetting that they have much to teach me). I can’t bring them anything worth having if I’ve forgotten how to live deeply and authentically myself. The other stuff will have its meaning and worth only if we begin with this. What strikes me with equal force is that the same is true for parenting as for teaching.

I’ve resolved to renew a promise every day, “I will not look right through you. I will know and value you instead.”  Even when there’s a yearbook deadline and grades are due and stacks of papers pile up.

Two thirds of the yard is in desperate need of mowing, and so I donned my mowing shoes (i.e., green and not coming clean) a few minutes ago and sprayed myself to keep the bugs away. Where biting insects are concerned, I am delectable - thin, fair skin, easy blood. I had sprayed my ankles and calves and my waist where my shirt sometimes rides up. Just as I prepared to wipe the stuff over my arms, I noted something wrong. I didn’t smell right. The odor wasn’t odious enough. No DEET. I looked at the bottle: hairspray. Great, my legs won’t curl in the humidity.

But it could have been worse. There was once a case of mistaken spray-can identity discovered by another unfortunate woman I know of. In a hurry to make her annual ob-gyn appointment on time, she grabbed a slender can from under the bathroom sink, thinking a little feminine hygiene spray might suffice since there was no time to shower. In the exam room, as he began her exam, her doctor looked up at her quizzically and asked, measuring his words carefully, “Been to a party?”

Turns out she’d applied her daughter’s body glitter precisely where she had aimed to refresh.

I’ve updated the version of WordPress I’m using, installed the Akismet plug-in to help me manage spam (much faster zapping possible), and turned off the log-in requirement for commenting, since I’ve been told it effectively prevented commenting altogether. (Sorry - my loss!) Updating WordPress inexplicably changed the font I had to look at in Firefox. I didn’t like the result and have switched to another simple but palatable visual theme called “veryplaintxt.” I like that un-ostentatious title. Whether you see the new look as utterly dull or elegantly simple is a matter of taste.

I like “elegantly simple” better than “idiosyncratically designed by somebody else,” and I am admittedly uninvested in the notion of spending days designing somethat that truly suits. Boy is that wordy. I’m too lazy. It’s summertime.