Let students go early. Running tonight, without fail.. yes, no fail. I will be on that tread and run faster than I ever have. And if not faster then more efficiently. Quiet classroom. What I need right now. Students hopefully out there writing, working on something. Writing their stories or working on the Kerouac papers or…
There’s always these two staplers on this desk, a desk that rises and descends upon command from button push, one of those two-part buttons with indentation in middle, clearly demarcating UP and DOWN. My student use them, I don’t, and often when a student tries to use one, there’s not a staple found.
In the mood to take pictures in a vineyard but I don’t have enough time to go out and come back. Not a problem for a writer like me.. using what I have and that’s an empty classroom. I’m seeing more wine and in more the presence of wine here than I am in the tasting room. How? Life. What you have, the immediacy and inescapability of your moment. I find a picture on my computer, one I took not that long ago, and I don’t feel the level of life from image than I do from what’s in front of me. Empty chairs, posters and maps on walls…. The off-projector. The flavor of the room is anything but dull, or stale, one-dimensional or prosaic. I’m in a contained freeness that shows me a similar vivacity to what I see in the shot.
They’re gone, but I’m here. Acknowledging my freedom in the room, my liberty and my lust for moments, observations, of any kind. Not only embracing what I have but elevating from it. New life in new moments, new thoughts an character growth, stories to tell. Packing up, and into air…