We saw a license plate that said "DRKING," which the new 21-year-old misread as "drinking" and then wondered if the missing letter was because it mimicked how a tipsy person might slur their words. I pointed out that it was probably "Dr. King"--and we laughed about his misreading and over-reading.
And then At: Well, either way, that license plate is probably going to get them pulled over. Regular cops/ Racist cops. [makes weighing/shrug/balancing gesture.]
Gulp.
Early morning run. Frost. Today. I will
love. Everyone. Like I'm long lost
family, prodigal,
like you're special. I'll stitch love to
even your lack of care, neglect,
share a request--like
tossing a small wish, easy as pennies
into some mall fountain--please,
can you wear a mask?
It lingers in our air--your answer is
irritable, the road rifts, rebels
at your insolent stride
I follow that script, know that road
I sift regret from the open
arils of the day
I still. The road calms, a dove coos
I know now it is "mourning"
not just--"morning"
Whole Foods pizza night over here as I was supposed to be doing scholarship interviews at dinner time... Still waiting to hear faculty personnel deliberation results... still wrestling with Nu's schoolwork.... etc.
On the done side: I have finalized Christmas presents and have stopped compulsively adding to everyone's gift baskets. And I have stopped stalking MCM furniture on Facebook marketplace. I scored a pair of Mersman step tables for 60 last week, and that was probably my peak + we really don't need more stuff.
Also: We weren't going to do holiday cards, but now I have one prepped and ready to print.
Something is clearly going on, and it doesn't need a genius to see I'm filling up my time with distractions and side projects instead of writing.
Grades are in! Ahead of schedule! And they're decent--generous in a pandemic, but not inflated.
I prioritized weekly assignments rather than a grand final project; that resulted in really solid foundational applications and a high rate of completed assignments. Extensions were available on request, Canvas was configured to allow later submissions, and email submissions were enabled for people who didn't make it.
The research students graded themselves ("ungrading"), and that went really well. They need the practice for grad school and teaching assistantships anyway, and it gave us some good discussions on the rubrics and objectivity. Speaking of teaching assistants--best email today was from AS, who graduated last year, with the subject heading "office chocolate." I miss pre-pandemic office culture so much.
All that, yes. But my own school child seems to be slipping quite badly. Big A took down one side of our refrigerator collage to post Nu's sad report card as a goad. (I'm not a fan of this, but was vetoed.)
the way it settles into a palimpsest
of belonging
Children best friends puppies homes
friends in-laws all them totems
of becoming
Yet: new laughter moves me, old words
bend my mind--press guesses
into being
We can enter spaces where time fades
earth freezes or poles thaw us
into belief
So here's me putting myself to bed with my chocolate and hot tea before the sun goes down.
(I'd made dinner early. AND took some over to L&T. AND showed the kids how to serve themselves around 5. And then, I left everyone to their own DEVICES. Haha.)
(When I woke up later, I found they'd put the leftovers away and started the dishwasher. 💕💕)
They were being so cute together while I made dinner--I asked to take a picture... and then they totally hammed it up. My kids are all irony and cheese (and honey).
(And yes, that's ANOTHER whole pumpkin pie L brought over because these guys loved the first one so much.)
I graded all day, loving the way student final projects have turned out.
I raked a path through the backyard in the afternoon in the hope of persuading my human kids to resume their pre-prandial walks with me... The puppy kids are, of course, there whenever I'm out.
I started a poem and stumbled into a good idea that's proving difficult to execute.
I've figured out everyone's holiday presents... just a few more things on their way. I've already gussied up/boxed/bagged most of the fam's presents too!
my mask mimics teeth
I hiss from my heart
I've scratched earth from the inside
till it hides at my center, fills my nails
tranquilized by living
traumatized by living
I take the silky dismissal of the day
beat its filthy drum outside my body
like whiteness, it feels--
white, old, dead, cold
or you know--just snowy and lonely
and knowingly waiting for my touch
_________________________________________________________
Note: I yelled out to L that the fallen tree's rootball looked like a monster. Just silence--no response to that, so I turned around to look and couldn't find her! For a minute or so--she was off taking some pictures too... But it was spooky and I panicked hard for a few seconds. Reminded me of reading Donna Harraway and loving on Jim's Dog.
Nostalgic use of family idiolect has made a comeback in a big way. At made me snort the other day, because he was 'sad' we never use the term "socker" anymore. Luckily for me, it's because the kids stopped leaving their socks all over the place.
Many things are older than me, I know
many things more mature, mellow
yet someone tells me write
so I say thank you
with a part of the pencil I use for writing
myself, highlighting--I always forget
to use the part for erasing--
my eyes, my loudness
for all those babies even now in cages
the leaving parents the babies
who take care of babies
babies given away
grief on grief--I am unready, each one
already too much. With long arms
I sweep the water's flow
over and over
He sounded so sad; I asked him if he wanted me to come home right away. And he said please, so I turned around* and began to run** home.
(*I didn't really expect him to accept my grand offer. **And I really couldn't run all the way home. Just sprinted here and there. Ha.)
It's not my story to tell; all I can say is I'm so glad there are doctors like Big A out in the world.
And then they both stomp around shouting "Where the food go/Where does the food go?" until it becomes a chant. Not sure if they're asking where the food went or where the food should be placed. But they're laughing too much to tell me. Then it becomes a song and somehow even after many, many hours on my feet, it really seems infectiously funny rather than annoying. Eventually, the table is set; Big A gets some photos; we eat. It's "the best Thanksgiving meal ever/really knocked it out of the park" for the 10th or 11th year in a row. All these dorks are nothing but kind.
There was an aborted game of You are a Liar and another of Coup, and the Criterion edition of The Gold Rush and more of L's pumpkin pie and Big A's whipped cream. Repeat.
So grateful. Really don't know how I would make it without these two and the rest of my crew. (11/26/2020)
HumHymnOm to morning
parse words from sounds
through the day.
Was I just riding skies
instead of seas--
Sadness and gladness are cruel
sirens, crossing countries
with me, waiting
near the cave that is my mind.
Do you hear me? Hear me!
Bear me forward.
I hymn you in the old ways
drowsily exhaling light
breaking like the day.
maybe something something being in community
about being connected and continuing
About holding my arms out like a tree even when empty
(stop that!) about sending all my pain to the sea,
where it's already salty
By day I will read something lofty, edifying, clear
At night, I will watch stars that seem cold
and know they're really quite fiery
Alert with my intention, my asylum of inattention
I sling myself to beauty, ignore summer's
pillows smattered with snow
Please hold my head as gently
as a bomb labeled 'headache'
knowing the earth is waiting
feeding time under the loam
who is it who knocked on the door (we didn't hear)
who is it who wants to come in (we can't really see)
howling into the cusp, dreams away from disaster
learning the circuitry of sadness, the lineage of loss
For in a different world
I lost many months ago
my tongue a tombstone
fingers clawing worms
(These human babies and also the two puppy babies asking for scraps by my side.)
Our governor has mandated no in-person classes from tomorrow as part of our three-week "pause" anyway.
The one thing the pandemic has given me is bonus time with my first-born. And also, somehow--the time and desire to disappear into a long, hot bath.
There is history to my grief
geography too--I wear what
was done to me--uncertainty,
a sadness, the calls to flood.
Someone--carry my disbelief,
it is heavy as a civilization.
I read skies to déjà vu myself
greying--sometimes--silvered.
here's pain; here's my armor
still songs beat in my heart
return me to myself, kids.
I have become a ghost; I go;
I was gone for a generation
until tears filled my prayers
swam into years of sky.
Return me to myself, kids,
I belong to a god who has
never even once killed me
the press of axe is only ice.
When surrender lies inside me
I... will shatter--into your accents
your stories, curious superstitions.
For you, I will... love unfinished.
***
I usually buy sweets at the Indian store for Diwali (or some years it has been a bar of chocolate or an assortment of fruit), but this year I watched a few Pinterest videos and made my own versions of coconut ladoo and besan ladoo. 2020 just seemed to call out for some extra effort.
We're a difficult family to make sweets for--At is sweet averse and allergic to all nutty things; Nu can eat some nuts; Scout and Huck can't eat raisins and sultanas; and Big A won't eat anything too sweet.
I added pumpkin seeds, dried apricots, and dried cranberries to the coconut ladoo and almonds and pistachios to the besan ladoo (and given that besan is chickpea flour, that one must be pretty high in protein!). In this Diwali iteration, At could theoretically eat the coconut ones, Nu will eat both, and I can safely share bites with Scout and Huck without hurting them (as I subbed out the raisins). Big A may still not like/eat them.
We've packed boxes for LB, TB, BS, and EM, and sent proud pictures to every family chat.
Tomorrow is Diwali and I want to get this down in the hope that I will be able to set it aside for a little bit. I've been carrying it around since yesterday when I read a thread on Mona Eltahawy's Twitter (since then, I've seen a few news outlets calling it the "Kashmore Tragedy"). The details are so horrific I can't say them out loud without choking and I don't really think I could pass it on to anyone else.
But the story keeps going around in a loop in my head, knotting now and then around the old nodes: the precarity of being a single mother; how difficult it is to love and grow a girl child in this fucking patriarchal world; the horror of captivity and unending rape; lives where people move across the country for a job that pays about 250 dollars; knowing people are out there victim-blaming--saying things like 'bad choices' and 'where is the father?'; what care and support are available to the mother and child; why support wasn't available to them previously; the courage it took for the mother to go to the police instead of prolonging the cycle; if the police treated her with respect; the bravery and compassion of the ASI (assistant sub inspector?) using his wife and daughter as decoys to catch the rapists; were the ASI's wife and daughter given a choice in the matter; worried for the ASI and his family now that his name and likeness are all over media; knowing there's so much more abuse I'll never even know from within safe spaces in families, communities, and professional + emergency services. Why are so many men/humans such trash?
On the Enby parenting group, one parent recently asked what our own lives might have looked like if we had the freedom of gender choice we support for our children. I know I've always wished for genderlessness, especially in professional settings. And in so many other settings, I'd have loved the possibility of having what Wanda Sykes calls a "detachable pussy."
In other news, Covid cases have been spiking on campus, so I'm moving everything online especially as students are being encouraged to go home. It's so disheartening after so many have been so vigilant and careful. And my classes were going to share research presentations next week too. Anyway.
Like most people, I feel I've normalized some stuff like going to the store, getting massages, etc. because it felt nicer not having to worry for a ninth month. But we ought to be worried.
This story about a smallish wedding reception (55 guests) leading to "three separate Covid-19 outbreaks that infected 178 people, putting three into the hospital and killing seven more" where "none of those who got seriously ill or died even went to the wedding, and many lived 100 miles away" is a sad and awful unsnooze call for me. I don't know that I could live with being the cause of someone's decline+/-death in this way.
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi in our Presidential Speaker series (via Zoom) tonight and here's my question and his response.
How do you decide whether or not to engage with someone who may put you in a position where you have to argue for your humanity/human rights?
Well, remember there are people who are close-minded and people who are open-minded.
So someone may believe in voter fraud, and you may bring them some sources and say: there is no significant voter fraud.
And they may say: [I] don't trust your sources.
So you ask them: Ok, what sources do you trust?
And you go and find material from those sources and they say: I don't trust those sources anymore.
Those people may have closed minds. And when a person's mind is closed, I try to not spend my time on them unless they are really close to me.
I'm going to spend my time with the open-minded people.
1 2 3
But was it Camus who said Wasn't it the butcher who said Perhaps it was I who said
Autumn is a second spring he'd operate on my identity my tongue was wronged--
when every leaf is a flower? until I had slowly been bled as while I prayed and read
Yet I know that I am dead into kindness and serenity? and inherited freedom songs,
and dead-er by the hour Not sure anymore--it maybe my mind, raveling like a knot,
in my sad and furious head. only leaves were actually shed. forgot--sick tyranny lies ahead.
Another busy day, but busy like treading water and informed by sadness every now and then.
I keep getting messages about students being on "medical leave," which is code for "tested positive for Covid," so I'm worried about them. In one class, it's all the students to whom I've had to mime pulling up their masks as reminders, so I worry too about what they did when I wasn't around and who else might have been impacted by all of this.
A bit anticlimactic ultimately--I blame CNN's rampant use of the thesaurus for two days of headlines (Biden on the cusp, on the verge, on the threshold). On the other hand, it solidified B's lead well beyond conjecture and allowed saner Trumpers to back away (?). Don't know; don't care RN TBH.
Here, Scout is tired of election news as the rest of us watch Vice-President-elect Harris and President-Elect Biden's speeches and marvel at decency and parseable sentences and earnestness on the podium.
Big A teased me about my (presumably wide-eyed) gawking--but no shame here. Who believes in America's possibility more than an immigrant, after all? Lots and lots of work ahead to be sure, but now there's a chance where before there was only survival.
Is it possible to be full of nervous energy and simultaneously enervated? Yes, yes it is. Time to call it, CNN!
I was kind of glad to have a planner full of class and meetings at hourly intervals all day, so I could go from one to prepping for the next. I may have rambled at a few of them (two nights of low no sleep will do that to me) and then the internet was all cute and hide-and-seeky-y. But I managed. The day is done.
But I've done so little at home today except find time to cuddle with everyone for comfort. We're still eating pizza from yesterday... I mean after all, Big A did order four pies for three humans.
Nu and I had planned to make another batch of the awesome "Pumpkin Spice and Fundamental Rights" cakes we made on election day. We gave/swapped so many away and Nu and Big A want more. As they reminded me, they want more, they want more, when you like something, you want more! But the baking will have to wait until tomorrow.
TBH, I thought the rest of the day would hold more excitement, but it was just a pattern of waiting, a fever of refreshing between class work and meetings, and ultimately not much else.
I was nervy all day--too nervy to make dinner--so we got pizza from Jolly Pumpkin, vegged, and watched an ep of The Queen's Gambit--and lo, all of this was good, but I kept checking Twitter for something better.
Also mystifying: how on earth this race is so close after all the cruelty and negligence that has been on display.
Nu got all caught up with school work. Cue a big sigh of relief. This picture of a hardworking Nu is from their D&D research though 😃.
BS started the campaign at 7, and they went on until 11, I think? Nu and I watched a movie AFTER that, and it snowed multiple times today, and clocks are telling different times all over the house, so I'm a bit bonkers.
Oh. And yesterday, instead of laissez-faire trick-or-treating, our street held two (tiny) parades at 2 and 6pm and we got to give out candy from a distance and marvel at all the costumes. Mx. Coronavirus was the cutest/scariest for sure.
though we die a thousand times
I can feel my heart used as a rattle
right before I start our lullaby
yet totally convinced of its ending
bitterly tracing all my sentences
to revolt, recovery, everything
water leads water how it desires
leaf leads leaf then devours
my thoughts a space of ache
like an animal and surrenders
now desperate where I marvel
with promises at your name
Yet apparently, it didn't stop people from watching the panel discussion as though it were a prize fight at the MUN House (per At). If I look amused in the top right corner it's because At was asking some cleverly self-deprecating question online. The corner of the laptop abutting the screen is his! Togetherness! Yay!
(OMG, I love that fellow. I have to admit, I lost all professional composure when a late arrival rehashed the "statues are history" tack in Q&A and At's deadpan riposte on the event chat was: "I got my history major by staring at a bunch of statues.")
Paths are crisp and crunchy; we're still inundated with tasks and deadlines; everyone seems to be holding their breath for next week.
Had a lovely chat with At, where he updated me on some health stuff and impressed me with the proactive and grownup way he had advocated for himself.
Later in the day, another chat with At, this time a boisterous facetime with the younger sibs. And then a lot of heavy discussion with Nu over dinner prep and dinner being a sounding board as they excitedly invented their character for the D&D party BS is starting Saturday. (Bless BS!!) It's the most animated Nu has been in a while, and reading the D&D manual introduced them to a lot of words they didn't seem to know (diminutive, arcane...).
I planned to class prep alongside Big A as he watched some cycling videos after dinner (these are just as impossible for me to understand as the unboxing craze all the kids were about a few years ago!) but I set aside my laptop for 'just a few minutes' and fell asleep on top of him and had to start all over again.
Dussehra is one of the many opportunities to renew and reset in the Hindu annual calendar. And I spent yesterday hopeful for all kinds of pandemic and election magic.
Today I quietly panicked in the car on my way home from teaching and made a list of things we'll need to stock up on. (Not because I anticipate shortages, but I DO NOT WANT to be out there.)
L and I have been a bit performative and obnoxious with our mask reminders lately. But I think I made L a bit upset with me (haha).
We met a big black bear of a standard golden doodle, and I fawned over the happy, tongue-lolling darling (from a distance). After puppy and human had passed us, L asked me archly if I'd noticed that the puppy's human wasn't wearing their mask.
I hadn't.
Oooop?
(Big A has turned off the wifi for some maintenance, so I can't check online, but there's no squiggly red line so at least it's a word? If "greening" is a Spring time word, "golding" ought to be an Autumn word!)
Anyway, I feel "golding" best describes both the turn of the woods and my delight.
another day rolls over into tomorrow I wake, roll over in bed reach for my phone wondering if ...
