Too much rests on 'I love you.'
We pile on the three-word shelf
Encyclopedias of happiness,
Manuals for self-fulfillment,
Novels that tell us
Where the meaning of life lies.
But three words can't encompass what we feel
Better than a 417 word song.
The unexpected smile that creeps up
When you look up and they're still there.
A longer embrace.
Confessing
That you bought them a toothbrush.

"If we are not able to be alone, we're only going to know how to be lonely."

http://vimeo.com/70534716

Word of the Day

Feeling Vomit

It's like word vomit, but with feelings.

Summer Time

This summer was one of the best in my short life. Not because the sun was brighter or ocean clearer; not because I went out more or because I found myself some summer lovin', but because I learned a lot. About myself. About my community. About my collegiate peers. About the world. About learning itself.

I've had this idea that I want to be a teacher for a while. I thought it might be smart to give it a shot. Might be smart to explore the possibility.
But rather than finding answers, I found an increasing number of questions (a number that keeps getting bigger the more I think about my experiences).

Here are a couple:

1. How can teachers develop a relationship of care with their students if they are supposed to maintain the existing power structures, if there are strict, uncrossable boundaries, if knowledge is supposed to be simultaneously transferred, discipline maintained, playing field leveled across the classroom... if no other relationship in the world can truly help mold this one?

2. What is social justice and what does it look like in a classroom? How does it apply to the response we must have when, say, three girls skip your class in the bathroom because they didn't do their homework?

3. Why are we certain that we have touched some students but felt that others were miles from reach? How do we reach them all? How do we not settle for a couple?

4. How do we mold ourselves to fit the needs of such diversity?

5. Where lies the balance between wanting a student to like you and wanting a student to learn from you?

6. What is the difference (where is the line) between being kind so as to not make a student shut down and never pay attention again and not pushing someone hard enough, to their full potential?

7. How do we change students' minds when they've led a life solely based on their parents' ignorance? How do we not insult who they are and where they come from if we think that what they think is stupid and hateful?

8. How do we try to understand our students without assuming we understand?

9. How can we have the lives of so many people in our hands and cause the least amount of damage, the most amount of change?


I at least found one answer. The answer...

Is teaching for me?

My phone rings.

It's the New York Times again because they didn’t think it was enough to tell me that 23 children died in India yesterday.

Insecticide in their school lunch. 

News.

Now it’s Ryan Braun, former baseball MVP

And I quote, “linked to doping,

Suspended for rest of season.”

I don’t care about baseball 

Let alone Ryan Braun

But I can’t help it.

I add his name to my list of disappointments.

Doping.

Lance Armstrong wins more trophies than I care to remember.

But he forgets that you can’t win if you’re not you.

He’s suspended.

Suspended in time, space because while people had been trying to cure world hunger and cancer, 

He had been cheating to win.

Winning.

Bayside park, 2008

I get chills down my spine because

I’m not sure anyone has ever spoken to me in this way.

My dad, an ex-communist, although still bearded

Has trouble believing.

First there was Cuba.

Then Argentina, with its string of criminals aptly pretending to be politicians.

But I’m 15 and Barack Obama makes me feel like we have the power to change the world.

Fuck! He creates a “we.”

How long has it been since there was a “we” for the American adolescent generation?

You know how much shit has happened since Vietnam?

I consider stealing someone’s identity, just to vote.

And then a few weeks ago, we think Nixon screwed us

But he wire tapped a hotel room, not a country.

State.

Florida has never been my favorite state

“No, no. I’m not from there. I just live there.”

But then a black 17-year-old boy,

1 degree of separation.

1 degree. 

Closer to him than Kevin Bacon

1 degree and his killer roams around the sunshine state

Even though he proudly wears the name tag he himself wrote,

The one the law itself allows him to bear

Murderer. 

You hate this state? I live here. 

I have to breathe his air.

Swim his waters.

My state is a systematic oppressor and killer.

What’s yours? The hummingbird state?

Florida.

Rick Scott is an asshole.

He looks like Voldemort 

But he plays the part too.

The common core will raise achievement

But how can standards be raised 

If our schools don’t have books

If no one ever told my sister that Oceania was the 7th continent

If my college counselor to this day

Can’t pronounce “Swarthmore”?

You know? That small liberal arts college 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia?

But don’t worry

Because Jeff Bush supports it too.

They are the common core of idiocy

If they think that making a new law

But hiring no new teachers

Will change the way we learn, the way we think.

Think.
Okay, maybe you're right.

Maybe spending 1.5 billion dollars since 2001 on wars that oppress

Will teach our children how to count.

Counting.

I can’t count them.

The number of disappointments I have felt since I started paying attention.

Maybe ignorance is bliss

But I can’t go back now.

Living For Everyone But Yourself

I've been thinking a lot about social media lately — about the fact that our generation lives on and for it.
It is impossible for most of the people I know to see, eat, feel... live anything without wondering how it might best be presented to everyone else.
The food you eat must look, not just taste, great. The outfits you wear must not feel, but look good. The places and things you see must not amaze and amuse you, but everyone else in your friend group.
The worst part about it is that very few of us have more than a couple of good friends on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or whatever else. Our lives now revolve around creating an image of ourselves for strangers.
"How will this make me seem?" is a question I'm sure millions of people across the world are asking themselves, and I have to wonder whether we have really stopped living for ourselves because of it.

My professor just e-mailed us with new office hours, since all of the community-building events on campus have interfered.

He starts by saying, "the problem with revolutions is that they make you late for dinner."

I want to tell him that the problem with his statement is that without revolutions, some people don't have dinner to come home to.