I've admittedly fallen into a rut. The blank screen has been staring me in the face the last couple of days and I've seen care bears running across. I remember being younger and when people would tell me to clear my mind, I'd imagine a great white blanket like a polar bear in a blizzard and then ever so randomly tiny little care bears of all colors run across the whiteness trailing little cartoon clouds of dust. When I clear my mind, that is what I see.
I guess my malaise centers around the approaching winter break. With only a week and a half until it arrives, instead of being excited about it, I'm already thinking about how quickly it will pass. I have ambitions for this much needed time off. I intend to use it as a planning period for the next semester. I feel that if I get a head start, I will be ready for the district and state tests that my students will need to embark on. I will be staying in Louisiana for this reason. While I will be able to catch up on sleep, I will fill my days with focused work and my nights with curfew beating pleasure. A few of my friends will be in the area and there are a couple of events that I'm anticipating. On Christmas Eve the parish has a tradition of lighting a series of bonfires along the levee. Even though it was bitter cold last year, it's still nice to walk from fire to fire. On that note, let me extrapolate how the cold weather in Louisiana is dramatically different than that of the northeast. Up north, the temperature drops much further than the south, but it feels like a dry, break-your-ears-off cold. Down here, due to the humidity in the air, even if it's forty degrees, the weather chills you to the bone. Now I'm not going so far as to say that one might be worse than the other, but both are excrutiating in their own ways.
This past weekend has been amusing. Friday was pretty much uneventful, but Saturday was a different story. After spending much of the day in the city, attending a professional day provided by Teach For America, I accompanied a friend of mine to the mall. I am not a fan of malls to begin with. For me, the only purpose they serve is for the life long pleasurable tradition of people watching. A good friend of mine wrote an extensive thesis on malls in America and I find the subject to be interesting. They represent a focused nebula of commerce deformed by capitalist propaganda. Stepping into a mall I feel like I'm entering a hallmark card written by George Orwell. Around the holiday season, gift-giving become a obsessive focus of many warm-blooded Americans. Yet the task of finding a gift that can be appreciated and treasure seems nearly impossible. Instead of taking the time to use our own repressed creativity by making something, we resort to the phenomenon of the gift card. "I don't know what the hell you want, so why don't you go figure it out on your own." The sad thing is I myself find it hard to know what I want around this time. I've always been very needy around present time. But for some reason this year, I don't think I truly want anything that can be "given," materialistically speaking at least. I'd like a correspondence in the form of a phone call or email. My upcoming brithday always coincides with the holiday season. Maybe it's because I'm "making"(a southern idiom) twenty four, or maybe it's because I'm so far from friends and family. But my birthday doesn't seem that special this year. If that's the unavoidable result of growing older then I don't like it. Dreams always seem to come true on my birthday. I mean, it was easily my favorite day of the year. As I grew older I'd always treasure those folks who would remember without me even mentioning it to them. I find this to be an impossible task, because I never remember anyone's birthday with the exception of my family. Dad: Oct. 21; Mom: Jan. 30; Corey: Sept. 17. When my sister turned 15 my grandmother passed away. I was never really close to my grandmother, and I felt more remorse for my sister, because she was devestated that she had to attend a funeral on her magic day. A year later, we attended my grandmother's grave unveiling. I don't mean to sound callous about my Bubbi's death, but I don't like seeing my sister feel sad. Death can be a confusing entity when it involves a person you either have no feelings towards or worse when you actively dislike that individual. Sometimes the emotions cause guilt, when we are expected to seel empathy. Sometimes they lead to anger, when others expect sadness. Are those deaths just as difficult to process as those of our dearest love ones? I guess not, because the impression of a person who had an emotional connection to us will most like outweigh those who we feel the opposite.
Ok, I'm jumping around like a jumping bean. I've never seen a jumping bean jump. I'd like to see a jumping bean jump. And are all jumping beans Mexican?
