So far away from what used to be

I am so far away from who I was a week ago, a month ago...

How the hell does that happen? Not only the slippery formation of self, the daily construction and reconstruction, as well as the daily dissipation and erasure, but the whole memory thing?

How is it that we forget so much of what was just so recently so damned important? Life shaping?

How is it that we are so willing to let go of our personae?

A few weeks back I was so absolutely riveted by Michael Ventura and now, without the visual reminder, and archive, I am almost wholly oblivious to that.

I feel like a bird, flitting from branch to branch. I am never the same bird, in the same moment. A new branch, a new bird,
with only the insistence to live in the moment pressing on to the next. I don't fly backwards, I don't retrace my steps, or hops...

I mean, even the fucking laundry remains the same. A shirt is a shirt--it doesn't remake itself or forget its shirtness if you wash it or if it sits ignored in the closet for years. It remains relatively stable.

Teenaged Opossum

So this morning, riding the Oak Leaf Trail, I encountered 6 deer and a teenaged opossum.

The deer appeared in 3 pairs.

I saw the first pair running along the parkway, parallel to the road, just ahead of me, for about 300 yards. Then they slowed and crossed the road in front of me and ran parallel to the road on my left for another 100 yards until they sped off into the woods. They were frolicking, running joyfully, playfully, maneuvering around the comstruction snow fences.

The second pair darted into the woods near Rainbow Field. They had just shown themselves briefly before startling.

The third pair ran in full tilt across the bike path, appearing almost to be flying, or springing, into the air just south of the railroad ttrestle near Bluemounmd Road. At full stride they appeared strong and imposing. Clearly there is a deer run there, as i have seen many deer in precisely that spot.

So, on the way home, I spotted a small animal crouched just outside the brush line along the road near the freeway viaduct. At first I thought it might be a large rat or a small raccoon--it was greyish and stolid. On second glance, as I cruised by, I saw it was a teenaged opossum perched on his haunches, patient, unstartled, snacking on something, his pink grey jaws slowly smacking as if he'd gotten carmel stuck in his tiny teeth.

I quickly slowed and circled back, surprised that he did not dash off.

I slowed to a stop directly beside him, no more than 7-8 feet away, as he chewed. Comically. As iif the task of chhewing and finishing whatever hhe was eating was too important and necessarily prevented him from any other simultaneous task. He looked at me with disinterest, turned his head slightly sideways, and then in one cumbersome move lollygagged back into the brush, a lopsided lumbering, delicate and yet awkward.

YeeeHaaaaaa! Nine Hours Leads to New Project #3

Woke up this morning, the second straight night of 9+ hours of sleep. I have not had this experience in years. Perhaps 25-30 years. I cannot recall two consecutive nights of even 8 hour sleep.

Last night I did awake from several disturbing dreams, which I don't wholly recall right now, although the last few nights I know have awakened from dreams that I found disturbing, but the content of the dreams was not shocking. It was the feeling tones, or some clearly subconscious and deep feeling beneath the dream, some feeling tone that was powerful, almost overwhelming, but not clearly evident, as if there were some deeper language that I was not fluent in yet carried its freight. Odd. So I wake up relieved. With a bit of dread.

But the newe thing is, I can return to sleep. In the past, once I awoke, I would have been awake for the rest of the night.

I woke up in the middle of the night from a really absurb dream and after being unable to return to sleep I turned on the TV and found Bono on a taped Larry King Live episode. I was intrigued by Bono's "Project Red" and "Conscious Consumerism." Both are ideas I can carry intro the classroom.

I also had an interesting thought yesterday. What if, in the service course, instead of asking students to serve at various agencies in the community, we identified one or several projects that we would like to enact in the school, to transform the school, and the course was about identifying and then putting that consciousness in action.

For example, what if our idea was to raise the institution's awareness about consumerism? Or sustainability? How might we make our ideas visible and somehow reshape the institution? Bring this up to the students next week.

Maybe that could be an action plan option for Projec t #3?

By the way, waking up after a second night of 9+ hours of sleep? I feel calm, assured, centered, quiet, confident, not edgy, not self-conscious. Not necessarily full of go-get-em, but alert.

So...

...why not write a poem about eating pencils, the anxiety and fear and hunger there. The neurosis.