mosaic of thoughts

My brain has lately been feeling like a tin can, all sorts of strange objects rattling around. I haven't held fast to anything; this week has been a bit lonely with Ryan working late and a panic settling in as the semester stumbles toward a closing (and the way I feel I could begin every sentence with "I should be doing.... but...").

Thinking about: how words are so mutable. The shift. Thinking about the phrase "for the last time." How false that is, in terms of reunion tours. How permanent that is at a hospital bedside. Looking back at a classroom door.

Last night was the breastfeeding class with Kelly; I kept closing my eyes as I fell asleep last night, seeing slobbery baby mouths wide open, little parasites to their mother's breasts. And I thought about the instinct that is my body enclosing around an infant, the way it feels so natural to want to hold one for prolonged amounts of time. Our bodies are coded in such different ways; my own thumps a bit when it sees the wide eyed innocence of a little one. In time.

Of course, that's how our bodies are, whispering on either side of us, in each ear: I want, I want, I want... It's a little tug of war battering about on the surface of your skin and patience becomes this awful commodity dumped on the side of the road.

For now, I am stuck in this place, four walls, three windows, one door, locked. Three light switches, the back I always keep off. A row of reading women blanketing the clock. The clock, which has been the metronome of my existence, punctuated by the bell, sporadic, well timed. I can look at the clock at night and see: 11:02, which means fourth hour will be done in three minutes. And twelve hours. It doesn't matter how my body tugs now, for want of education or a child, because neither will be happening in the next four and some weeks. No, I will need to strap myself to my cheap office chair and grade, no matter what the distraction.

Oh but...

Yesterday after school, I spent my time in a kind of YouTube enhanced debate with one of my students. It was a game of "Have you heard of..." and then we would sit back and listen: Victor Wooten, Kaki King, Robert Randolph and the Family Band. Oh, and he showed me this one, completely unrelated to music.

Good things:
- two photographs published in Blue Print Review: Dandelion and Hay Creek
- a random surprise present for Ryan: the finger drum mousepad (since he's always so twitchy and all)
- the slap of a New Yorker back issue against the window--first hornet killed of the season