50-some seconds over hour marker. Beginning to tire of this seat but I’m going to follow my own teachings to my students and not bloody move. One hour from now will put me at about 10:40-something. Home, run, back home for shower then up to SCOE. My educating urge and purpose has been re-punctuated this morning. Writings in one location: Something I’ll for sure stress over the summer, and again the emphasis of the Composition Book. I need to follow my own counsel more, and continuously, I know. It’s a work, it’s a process, it’s a lecture to Self as well as the students.
The piece of paper at my left, the biz plan, scribbling something on it now— SINGULARITY. In the margin, and vertically, as this one student had so often in her journal. She arrived late but showed me one of the more impressive and intense journaling practices of any student, even more inspiring for me as the educator than some of the ‘heavyweights’, as I call them. The journal is where everything leaps from. Where it starts. It has to start with ink.. and always. Another word: MUSIC. Everything must have a music to it, if it’s to engage a reader.. a meter and tone, chordal consistency, all, always.
My run— I want 8 miles on that treadmill counter. If the pain in the knee right doesn’t fade, or universe forbid it worsens, then I’ll stop, do something weigh-oriented, or pushups, something to keep with my health and fitness hankerings and sweeping inclination. This is like a run, this sitting, I want to stop but won’t let myself. I keep typing and reflecting on the semester, what certain students have done to my view of the profession, and the act of teaching, how the act of teaching is in no way an act. And much more than a simple “profession”. Running…
May need a walk outside, or just a break. NO, you don’t do that when you run, do you? Stuck with thought but motivated all the same.. wish it weren’t so scorching outside. Too hot to run so I have to trot on that goddamn treadmill. Wonder if there’s a book I could listen to through the phones rather than the regular “Cardio” station on Pandora. But would that help? Who knows. I know nothing at the moment, or that’s how the adjunct feels, just killing time, or is it killing me? These two hours of ME/writing time are growling and roaring past the writer/adjunct/runner/overthinking overthinker.
Have to wake up.. was too tired to run on Monday and I won’t let that bloody happen today. This is an adjunct symptom, being stuck with these early-ass classes then being tired the whole day and even more useless if we go home and nap for a couple hours. It dooms us, our situation, oftentimes. But now, I fight back by pursuing education in a precision that better me suits. I run, I run… across the page and soon on that belt— in one place. Is that a metaphor? Maybe. I’d like to think ‘no’, but it depends on what I do.
Poetry, everywhere and everything. And again, MUSIC. Want to read, want to read now! So write something to read! I DID! The other day while at the winery, that spoken-word verse, and the extension during the freewrite in class, Monday with the 5-erz. Full-timers again talk loudly in the mailroom (and yes, it’s full-timers this time, one of them being the always-anesthetized-looking chair). I put in the other earphone, so I’m deaf. Only hear what I want to. Music. No full-timers. OR adjuncts. Coffee getting cold. I should stop sipping anyway, seeing’s how I’ll be soon on that rotating belt. 77 degrees outside. Should I try?
36 minutes, just under 37. And I’m bored of this room, all the old books and computers, and VHS’s on the shelves above my head and around me. This room’s like a time capsule, or coffin, but I have to operate in it, fight it, resist its pushing me down into some mood. It discourages then encourages, it can’t make up its mind. The color consistency, horrible.. lots of dull faded browns and grays, off-white made even more ‘off’ by pencil, pen, and coffee stains. More than tired of this seat, I’m sick of it. But maybe that’s what the room wants. Maybe the full-timers had this all planned… So I more assume the insurgent’s urgency and stricture and intendedness.
With the coffee somewhat more boreal than I expected to be (haven’t sipped in a while), I can’t decide if it’s on my side or the room’s, the full-timers’. The teacher in me says “Slow down, further interpret the room, the shelves and chairs and your coffee, don’t get exhausted, have exhaust the same way an engine does, a train, some growling race car or truck— “STEAM AHEAD!” I say to myself, just under the Hutcherson track. Furthering the singularity of my moment. Not sure I’m more focused or contained, but I’m something… Maybe I’m mad. to continue, to read, to write, to teach, to BE. And be ME.
Contingency on what I do— okay, so what am I doing? Writing, meditating, reading as I write, eavesdropping on these boring instructors both adjunct and full-timer? I have no idea what I’m doing— such love, such furtherment, encouragement and lesson, a lecture with Bobby’s mallets— Now I see myself typing like I’m standing beside a seated Self, the writer’s not writing but playing an instrument. Words are notes, they constitute chords— jam session, one participant, participating in his own participle— going, running, teaching, writing, learning…
26:28 left. Now less of course. Done with the coffee. Forcing self into runner mode. Now the room’s neutral, I don’t notice it as much. Another word on “business plan”: RUNNING. And at the top of the page. Starting to believe that running is writing and writing is me running toward what I want— to write while traveling, observing the world, its thesis to us which is to delight in it. Man has ruined the world, but there’s still morsels for our felicity. Just something I’ve been thinking about lately. I don’t want to get to my travels at a point where we’ve definitively ruined our planet.
Past where I want to be in sitting, word-wise. Time for run.. leave, meditate, peace, dictate an oder of Wellness in this writer’s life that he;s never before touched, sipped and sensed. 30-some seconds left in minute 18 in the countdown.. then 17, 16, past and past. My past provides more for my manuscript’d present. “Run toward that!” I say to myself and nearly scream to be heard. I should. I should terrify these full-timer wagtails, see what they’d do. Such fantasies are very much as well part of the author’s process. If it’s a process at this point. Thinking more just a crazy crEATive practice.
(5/18/16)
