Summer &c.

It has been hot in my room these past two nights. Hot to the point of unsleepable. And just today I realized this is because I had forgotten to switch the little knob on the side of the ceiling fan that controls the direction it rotates, so all this time it's been pushing warm air down on me instead of, well, drawing the cool air up? or doing whatever it does to generate cool breezes instead of warm ones, which is fine when my room is an ice box in the winter, but not as nice when it's ninety and humid. So I fixed it.

And because of one very clever mosquito hiding under my desk yesterday while I was working (or slacking) away, I'm now peppered with my first bug bites of summer. This initial round always seems to itch more than the rest, like my skin hasn't built up its immunity yet. Good to get it over with though, I suppose, just as long as this extreme fatigue I've been feeling lately is due to heat and lack of sleep, and not Malaria.

Also, I just googled images of "roman nose" because I've heard that phrase used often enough in my life, but never been quite sure what one actually looked like. One page that came up seemed to have nothing to do with facial features, but did yield this fantastic quote that I would rather share on facebook but don't quite think my students should be reading things like this coming from me. So here it shall go instead: Satan himself can't save a woman who wears thirty-shilling corsets under a thirty-guinea costume

PS - Apparently I lied about that Gulliver's Travels first edition that I thought I bought at the yard sale last weekend. It did only have one copyright date, which I thought meant it was the original printing, but, after checking my roman numerals, I learned that the copy I own is merely from the 1920s. Consider my boast retracted.

I'm just-- I'm just--

...terrible at this game. I sit and scroll through all of your blogs, hypocritical and disappointed when nobody has updated. Everything and nothing has been happening lately, thus the paucity of posting on my end (excuses, excuses, she sighs and shakes her head).

I suppose I could start with the garage sale. Danny and I went garage saleing last Saturday when Heritage Hill had a neighborhood-wide event, and I went bonkers at the special used book table. I got a hard cover copy of The Island of the Day Before, a first edition (seriously) Gulliver's Travels, and a collection of Fitzgerald for a dollar each, plus a BASS from 1997, Camus' The Stranger, and another Dave Eggers book. I'm reading You Shall Know Our Velocity right now, and loving it like I haven't loved a book in a very long time, perhaps since college. I always hesitate to spend time reading contemporary books, because there's so much crap out there mixed in with the good stuff, but this one is substantive and subtle and complicated. Glorious! There were more, too, whose titles escape me at the moment. So my summer reading pile is now burgeoning to the point that I've run out of book shelves and have started making piles on the floor. I didn't take any cash with me on purpose, planning on a look-but-don't-buy kind of a day. But I had some spare change in my wallet, and I kept running into these fabulous items on sale for a quarter, so I also acquired a t-shirt making kit, a silver ring (is it weird wearing used jewelery? earrings maybe, since they go through holes...), and some shish-kabob skewers. (Danny loaned me the money for the books, and I paid her back with a drink at the roller derby, which happened that night. I cannot go into detail about the roller derby here, but I just want to mention that our evening involved a flask full of peppermint schnapps, which I'm ashamed of for a few reasons...) In sum, it was a supreme day.

And then my seniors graduated last night. I went and sat in the same church where I graduated high school, only now I was on the other side of the aisle and wearing fancier robes. I couldn't not reflect as I was sitting there while the cascade of warm wishes and advice from speaker after speaker rolled over me. Six years, and look at me try my hardest not to sound trite and cliche, but I didn't realize until many hours later that the strange feeling I had at the ceremony was not nostalgia or regret; I was proud - and not for my students, like you might think. No, this was a much more selfish, egocentric kind of thing. I was proud that only six years out of high school and two years out of college, I have a decent job and a place to live and a tiny little savings. Now, I know the point of life is not to race past all of the risk-taking and mistake-making and get settled down right away, but I've always been a security-seeking kind of person, so this is okay for me. In fact, I've been trying to convince myself that this is okay for the past twelve months. This whole year, as I've been struggling and striving and falling short of my own and others' expectations of me on a pretty regular basis, I have wondered if I didn't make a huge mistake in taking the steady job and committing myself to one path for years and years and years. How many people and things and ideas am I missing out on by planting myself here in Grand Rapids, and how short am I selling myself? But sitting there among the other staff members, looking at all of these kids going off to start their wanderings about, I suppose I finally let some of that go and gave myself permission to acknowledged that I am beginning to be a real, professional, adult-type person and all of those things the speakers were talking about - the bright future and the opportunities and all that - came true in a way, and landed me there in that chair. Anyway, our principal didn't hug every student like Mrs. Graber did, that's one of the other things I remember thinking last night. Besides that it was sort of a haze of processing in (do you people who went to high school with me remember the tunnel the teachers make for the students to walk through before going into the hall? I got do that! If I were the type to cry about every little thing, I would have cried about it) and sitting and standing and clapping and hugging.

So now my schedule at school is essentially reduced to part time, since two of my five classes were all seniors. It's amazing how much one can get done in the middle of the day when one is not wrangling eighteen-year-olds. And there are seven more days of class left and then three days of exams, and lots of friends and bbqs and patios and pontoons to fill in the gaps between school and sleep. Then I will be free and perhaps begin blogging again with a more respectable frequency.

Some pretty words this time to balance out the ugly ones. I think the idea of this is just lovely.

I've got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death

in my mouth the tea
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette
dry the maroon robe

chills me I need you
and look out the window
at the noiseless snow

At night on the dock
the buses glow like
clouds and I am lonely
thinking of flutes

I miss you always
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine

although I never weep
and hold you in my
heart with a very real
humor you'd be proud of

the parking lot is
crowded and I stand
rattling my keys the car
is empty as a bicycle

what are you doing now
where did you eat your
lunch and were there
lots of anchovies it

is difficult to think
of you without me in
the sentence you depress
me when you are alone

Last night the stars
were numerous and today
snow is their calling
card I'll not be cordial

there is nothing that
distracts me music is
only a crossword puzzle
do you know how it is

when you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go

Morning
-Frank O'Hara

Warning: Rated R for graphic imagery involving puss

Transcribed from my other journal and maybe headed back there soon because I'm still not sure if this is way more than you would ever want to know:

I'm afraid I must be terribly vain.

Recently I got (and am still getting over) my first cold sore. We're talking boils and ooze and scabs and puss and blood, all perched right upon the corner of my lip for all to see. Seven to ten fucking days is how long it takes to heal, according to WebMD. Seven. To. Ten. Unacceptable!

But what can I do? Even rolling around on the floor can't assuage this one. So I turn to the next best thing: talking it to death; talking it to abstraction; talking it to oblivion. I feel compelled to talk about it all the time, so whomever I am with knows that I know how ugly it is (I am) and that I am something like sorry about it. I constantly bring it up because I assume whomever I am with is probably thinking about it anyway. I mean, how could they not, as it sits there, oozing away, in the middle of my face. I want them to know that it's there because I have no choice, but they should rest assured that I am as disgusted by it as they are, if not more so, since, after all, it's all that blood and puss and scabs IN MY MOUTH!

And, when I can spare a moment away from my self-pitiful wallowing, I really start to feel bad for my students, who have to look at me all day. And I'm surprised that they still treat me exactly the same. No one stares or makes funny faces. And this gets back to why I think I'm vain - because I seem to assume that how other people treat me depends on how I look. Like my appearance is the primary factor warranting their respect, and I expect them to behave badly when I look weird.

But they were fine, still approaching me to ask questions and listening attentively to the answers. So, did I just assume they'd judge me based on looks because maybe subconsciously that's how I judge others? Did I expect them to stare and make faces because that's what I'd do, or what I'd want to do at least? And I really such a small, petty, and superficial person? I'm afraid so.

Then again, my manners or pity or something would probably kick in if I were faced with a situation where someone or something was funny looking. I wouldn't actually stare and make faces, even if I wanted to. So maybe all my students are just doing that. And does that make me feel better about myself or worse? Better that I'm not really so much meaner than they seem to be, or worse because behind their impassive faces they're really thinking all of those things I was imagining? Depends on whether I'm the object or the observer, I suppose - the human or the freak. But aren't we all really just freaks, in some way or another (cue emo music), masquerading as normal people and hoping no one will notice the flimsiness of our disguises? Or is that just what a freak would think, to try to make her oozy-lipped self feel normal?