I Love You, Henry D.

a kiss on the cheek - a slap, too

two pieces of mail from NYC today. the first, a postcard from sheila. it always makes me happy to see her handwriting. i am one of those rare types who LOVED junior high school, with all of its sock hops, drama, and silliness. junior high will always be entwined with sheila marie domingo. i met sheila in 5th grade, but we didn't become best friends until 6th grade, and for three years we were inseparable. then at the beginning of our freshman year of high school, she moved to Martinez, California. sigh. ten years later in 1996, she moved from Calli to NYC, stopping at my place in chitown along the way. well, actually she moved to staten island, but we all have to start somewhere! two years later, ashok and i headed east ourselves. by this time sheila had a TINY rent controlled apartment in the east village, across the street from my first teaching job, east side community high school. she still lives there because, dammit, you don't give up rent control in NYC, even if you have to bathe in the sink and shit in the closet! so what, pray tell, is other piece of mail? jesus. ok, weeks and weeks ago, i sent a fax to the NYC department of education requesting an official accounting of the time i taught there. let me just preface this, all of my experiences at the DOE were stress filled and sometimes downright depressing: excruciating waits, shuffling from this apathetic person to that, incomprehensible paperwork, etc. so it should come as no surprise that they didn't accurately account for the time i spent teaching there. not even close. my time at MCNDHS, according to them, was three months, not the three years i spent there. i won't go into the other injustices, but yea--a hard slap. it's ok though, i know what i've done, and i will not tarry in the past.

i'm a hypocrite - but i can try, still, and keep trying

i drove my SUV today, and i will again tomorrow. but then i carpool for three days in a little hatchback. it's something. soon i won't drive at all, and i'll go live in the woods - like Henry D.T.

corporate comrades

when i started working in cubicle land, i had a supervisor who was in her mid-twenties. i never met her, just chatted on the phone. in my experience, from working in restaurants to teaching, twentysomethings just don't know what the fuck they're doing when it comes to managing people. they are unnecessarily stern, too eager to please their superiors, rule followers of the most annoying sort, and just a complete and utter DRAG! ashok shares the same experience in his cubicleland, as well. oy! oh art, where art thou?? of course, we've created our worlds, and there is no one to blame but ourselves for what we have wrought. now to wrought again. oh man, this is a great quote from eckhart tolle: "when the mind is running your life, conflict, strife, and problems are inevitable." now why didn't i think of that? i guess i did, if i remove the "I".

singin' the blues in chitown

i am in the right town, i guess. eckhart also has an explanation that i like about all the pain, both physical and emotional, that comes with the menstrual cycle:

Apart from her personal pain-body, every woman has her share in what could be described as the collective female pain-body--unless she is fully conscious. This consists of accumulated pain suffered by women partly through male subjugation of the female, through slavery, exploitation, rape, childbirth, child loss, and so on, over thousands of years. The emotional or physical pain that for many women precedes or coincides with the menstrual flow is the pain-body in its collective aspect that awakens from its dormancy at that time, although it can be triggered at other times too.

~ from The Power of Now p. 167

more to come soon, believe it!