365 days ago
I was holding my phone up
Hoping airwaves would travel
From my end of the country to yours,
To deliver a promise.

365 days ago
I had 365 days ahead of me.
Today
I have the memory
Of the past 365 days
For the next.

Today I went down your timeline.
Down, perhaps, to 2010.
I'd say I got to know you.
The you you were back then.

Your smiles are wide and plenty
You share exciting news,
Reply to comments, pictures, tags.
You laugh, you drink, you schmooze.

Today you don't write on people's walls
You don't thank people for sharing
You ignore all the pictures that are up
Don't remark on what your friends are wearing.

I fear your inactivity
Means something bigger, something more.
If you're not having fun in pictures,
Are you having fun at all?

I now long to have known you
When smiles were all you knew,
When red cups frequented your big, rough hands
When your posts weren't far and few.

I wish Facebook didn't tell me
Who you used to be,
I look at who you are today,
And wonder how much it has to do with me.

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.