Today I ordered my ticket back from Poland. I go there on Dec. 15 (the return leg of my flight here) and return on Dec. 31. Then I will use the last leg of this ticket to go to Poland in the summer and pick Ricky up to come here to stay the summer with me. I emptied my bank account to do it. I will only be with him for two weeks. I really wanted to stay for two and a half weeks but just couldn’t swing it financially.
It is so nice on Skype when he wants to talk to me. You don’t how much it means to be loved and missed by your child. I had been dreading that he would just give up on me or just accept that Daddy is absent or just avoid talking to me because I couldn’t be there in person. He doesn’t like to talk every day though.
Today he got the second package I sent him, complete w/ Spongebob DVD (1st season), Spongebob crabby patties candies, a small pumpkin—which the US Post Office clerk cleared for shipping—an ASU Sun Devil mask (Halloween garb), a Krispy Kreme employee hat, hotwheels, some paperback Sesame Street books, etc. Some of that was provided by Uncle Steve, too. R don’t know it yet but he’s going to get some hotwheels tracks for Christmas.
I don’t know abt this blog. What do you think? I am trying to make it more approachable for everybody. I’m not sure abt a blog for the whole family, but at the very least I want to be able to invite my friends to read it. I still hesitate at every abbreviation, swear word or abuse of the third person conjugation. In class I uphold perfect English as the model. One night, a student said to me, “You like perfect English.” Then he added, “But that’s not the English I hear when I’m talking to people.” In Arizona there are no longer ESL classes for young people. My student, who’s in his sixties at least, says that at night he has to teach English to his grandkids and others. He was almost in tears when he told me this. I told him that I wanted him to be able to understand everything he hears. But actually, the structure I was eliciting from him was “a lot of,” and I was trying to get him to see the particle ‘of’ as being important. The biggest hick native speaker out there don’t say, “It cost a lot money.”
But I have by now completely blown my cover in saying these things. You now know that I am an educated native speaker and teacher of English. I have taken advanced university grammatical analysis. I studied French in high school two years, where our French teacher actually had to teach us English grammar along w/ French. I studied Old English as a hobby for two or three years. I used to analyze everything I read or heard, even before I started my major in English. I started a master’s program, too.
When I first got into English 101 in college, I fell in love w/ writing. I fell in love with my teacher too because she could talk abt grammar and rhetoric. She used to move her hands slowly, interlocking her fingers to show us how everything should fit together.
In high school, I was getting into all sorts of trouble my first year and hanging around all the wrong people. (That sentence is not nearly as interesting as if I told you WHAT I was doing every day, but again, this blog is for my friends, some of whom are/were students of mine.) I was put into remedial English, where the teacher used to read to us. The book was My Shadow Ran Fast, abt a prison parolee who had to stay straight. Hint, hint, she was saying to the motley crew.
But in that class there were magazines. Bicycle magazines. I had torn my bicycle apart and put it back together a dozen times by the time I was in high school. The magazines interested me and I started reading them. I also took metal shop in high school so I could work on my bike more effectively. I also took French because of bicycles, the tour de France, etc. I liked machine shop so much that I started out on a career as a machinist. After a while I was going crazy with boredom. I went back to college and fell in love with my own language. I got into teaching and writing.
I’m feeling anxious today and taking Axminophan for it. I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety lately and I don’t know why. I have felt this latest type of anxiety for about twenty years, and have recently realized it’d been that long and axing God why. Why should I feel anxiety around people? I don’t need to take axmiphna till I get on the train. I no longer worry abt a heart attack, which is good I guess. Ironic though, because I am probably closer to one now than at anytime in my life. What I now have is these damned impulses to do things I really don’t want to do. Only an OCD person can understand that. Why twenty years?
I’m not with Ricky. I just got a surge of that feeling.
Strings of lights. A fatter guy sits across from me. Solomon Burke in my ears. Ricky is why I write. Four small beers last night. Nice. Cloudy head today, but I’m doing ok. No steel guitar.
I’m supposed to be studying for the AEPA—a test which will determine whether I can be a teacher in Arizona, if I know my field—English—well enough, and I can’t. I can’t apply my powers of concentration to the study guide. I don’t know exactly what is going to be on the test, but it will be difficult, if the study guide is any indication—literary analysis, reading theory, rhetoric, a literary essay. I’ve been hitting about 75% and am nervous about what I’ll do if I fail. Join the Peace Corps? Just stay in the job I’m in for life? Head back to Poland and get a job in another city? I could do that last one easily and don’t for the reasons listed in an earlier blog. But I sure think abt it sometimes.
Taco time.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
LTDL--Early Salvation Army
Hello again.
Well, the steel guitar blog worked out. It is self-contained. I worked through something in it. It’s done. The new steel guitar instruction book that supersedes my blog worked out too—I would only supplement it with a C6 song book, but that’s just me. I’m not so sure abt my old idea for another book, Learning and Teaching Dead Languages. A perusal of books available for learning Old English books shows that there are several new ones since the time I used to study the language regularly. And they look good. But I don’t think they have anything abt teaching the language.
A friend said that that blog was like stepping into my house uninvited. I intend to blog this time so no friend would feel like that. Some may think the furniture is chipped and in need of replacement. Some may find the thrift store look campy. But hopefully they won’t feel another room in my place is really for sitting.
I don’t know what to write though. I feel like I’m in the Van Morrison song, No Religion. The line goes, “When I cleaned up my diction, I had nothing left to say.”
I swear in my living room, and I abbreviate, so you’ll just have to put up w/ that.
When we last left our hero, he was angry at himself for being relatively at ease with the fact that he knows he will never be able to live in Poland with his son, Ricky, four years old, again.
Last time I was trying to talk to Ricky, his mother lit into me for taking a long time to make up my mind. I was trying to save her some processing money and myself the problem of paying child support before its time, and she lit into me with that accusation. When you are connected to sbdy thru marriage, names will ever hurt you. When we lived together she’d wake me up from a winter slumber, crying and saying we must do such and such now. That’s how she wanted me to sign off the most recent mutually-related divorce papers. But I learned not to do such things when we lived in our last apartment and she got me roped into a religious ceremony for Ricky’s sake, which was redundant and against my better judgment. Another factor in an international marriage is communication, by which I mean being totally clear on what you and your spouse are talking about. V has no patience for getting clear on things.
But I have decided that I am going to sue for custody of Ricky when he is twelve years old. Today when the Vie was on she axed me if I wanted a divorce, and I had to question whether I really did. I later decided that, yes, I did. This may or may not involve making it a no-fault divorce. I think it’s all her fault, and pressing that could get me custody. But I may not be the most objective source.
Here’s a poem I wrote:
They Talked
Lit white-on-blue street flash by.
University town.
They ought to spend money on more signs like that.
“That’s covered parking. It’s a parking lot for cars. People leave their cars there and go and do stuff around here like going to school. Then they come back and get in their cars and drive home.”
“Well, there aren’t any cars there now,
But there are cars there during the day.
All the people have gone home.
Because most people work or go to school in the day.”
“That guy looks like Beck.
Do you know who he is?”
“He’s a singer.”
“No, I just mean that guy just looks like him. Similar.”
“Similar.”
I know how this Beck guy grew up.
His Dad told HIM all about this, explained it all to him.
Or he didn’t.
He needs a shave. No he doesn’t—it’s the style.
He’s reading. A novel? Pop psychology? How to succeed in something?
He wears a red zip-up sweatshirt and easy cloth black shoes.
He goes to college in my mind.
His dad talks to him on the phone.
Mom talks to him, and they talk about him.
They drink coffee and do parent stuff but think about him a lot.
I think about you and
How I want to help you
And really tell you all about all of this.
Will you go to college?
Will you shave? What matter of your style will be foreign to me?
Will you carry a book on the train?
Will you listen to pop, rap, the new genre or out-of-the way stuff?
I wish I could help you do it
Your way.
My way.
Our way.
The way.
Which of those? No word really captures it. Each does.
Can I warm up your coffee? Maybe you’d like an beer instead. Today I worked out on a step machine. When I was done, I was asked how long I had. “21 minutes,” I said. “That ought to be enough for one Guinness,” they said. I tried to continue the conversation but didn’t come out on top, unless you read this. Guinness is low-alc, and I want to homebrew and get to below 2.5% alcohol. Lovely day for a Guinness. Get you one?
Well, the steel guitar blog worked out. It is self-contained. I worked through something in it. It’s done. The new steel guitar instruction book that supersedes my blog worked out too—I would only supplement it with a C6 song book, but that’s just me. I’m not so sure abt my old idea for another book, Learning and Teaching Dead Languages. A perusal of books available for learning Old English books shows that there are several new ones since the time I used to study the language regularly. And they look good. But I don’t think they have anything abt teaching the language.
A friend said that that blog was like stepping into my house uninvited. I intend to blog this time so no friend would feel like that. Some may think the furniture is chipped and in need of replacement. Some may find the thrift store look campy. But hopefully they won’t feel another room in my place is really for sitting.
I don’t know what to write though. I feel like I’m in the Van Morrison song, No Religion. The line goes, “When I cleaned up my diction, I had nothing left to say.”
I swear in my living room, and I abbreviate, so you’ll just have to put up w/ that.
When we last left our hero, he was angry at himself for being relatively at ease with the fact that he knows he will never be able to live in Poland with his son, Ricky, four years old, again.
Last time I was trying to talk to Ricky, his mother lit into me for taking a long time to make up my mind. I was trying to save her some processing money and myself the problem of paying child support before its time, and she lit into me with that accusation. When you are connected to sbdy thru marriage, names will ever hurt you. When we lived together she’d wake me up from a winter slumber, crying and saying we must do such and such now. That’s how she wanted me to sign off the most recent mutually-related divorce papers. But I learned not to do such things when we lived in our last apartment and she got me roped into a religious ceremony for Ricky’s sake, which was redundant and against my better judgment. Another factor in an international marriage is communication, by which I mean being totally clear on what you and your spouse are talking about. V has no patience for getting clear on things.
But I have decided that I am going to sue for custody of Ricky when he is twelve years old. Today when the Vie was on she axed me if I wanted a divorce, and I had to question whether I really did. I later decided that, yes, I did. This may or may not involve making it a no-fault divorce. I think it’s all her fault, and pressing that could get me custody. But I may not be the most objective source.
Here’s a poem I wrote:
They Talked
Lit white-on-blue street flash by.
University town.
They ought to spend money on more signs like that.
“That’s covered parking. It’s a parking lot for cars. People leave their cars there and go and do stuff around here like going to school. Then they come back and get in their cars and drive home.”
“Well, there aren’t any cars there now,
But there are cars there during the day.
All the people have gone home.
Because most people work or go to school in the day.”
“That guy looks like Beck.
Do you know who he is?”
“He’s a singer.”
“No, I just mean that guy just looks like him. Similar.”
“Similar.”
I know how this Beck guy grew up.
His Dad told HIM all about this, explained it all to him.
Or he didn’t.
He needs a shave. No he doesn’t—it’s the style.
He’s reading. A novel? Pop psychology? How to succeed in something?
He wears a red zip-up sweatshirt and easy cloth black shoes.
He goes to college in my mind.
His dad talks to him on the phone.
Mom talks to him, and they talk about him.
They drink coffee and do parent stuff but think about him a lot.
I think about you and
How I want to help you
And really tell you all about all of this.
Will you go to college?
Will you shave? What matter of your style will be foreign to me?
Will you carry a book on the train?
Will you listen to pop, rap, the new genre or out-of-the way stuff?
I wish I could help you do it
Your way.
My way.
Our way.
The way.
Which of those? No word really captures it. Each does.
Can I warm up your coffee? Maybe you’d like an beer instead. Today I worked out on a step machine. When I was done, I was asked how long I had. “21 minutes,” I said. “That ought to be enough for one Guinness,” they said. I tried to continue the conversation but didn’t come out on top, unless you read this. Guinness is low-alc, and I want to homebrew and get to below 2.5% alcohol. Lovely day for a Guinness. Get you one?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)