Sky and Synapses

September 13, 2014
10am

I'm sitting on the back deck drinking coffee and reading The New Yorker. The temperature has dropped into Fall after weeks of humidity and heat. I'm surrounded by trees and cloudless sky of almost "October blue" that my favorite English teacher referenced once, after opening his Norton Anthology, casting a reflective glance out the window of our classroom into the endless blue, shutting said anthology, and then pronouncing, "I can't do this today." He walked out after looking at us all briefly, frozen for a moment to see, perhaps, if we understood that this class was over, and why it was over. I understood. I, too, often found myself governed by the look of the sky: sun and warmth called to me like a siren; rain evoked a stronger work ethic and introspection.  Neither have changed. I have always TRIED to stand up to my devotion to the weather when in conflict with the duty at hand. So, when Dr. Closser succumbed to it on that October afternoon in my nineteenth year, my admiration for him--and for this sky--soared.

Dr. Closser remains one of my favorite professors. His love for poetry, which he usually recited from memory, was infectious. And he taught always with a bottle of water nearby, as a cancer of which he never spoke had compromised his salivary glands. His surveys of literature reinforced my love of the language and my awe when woven artistically into story or verse. As a college student, I was in that rare place and time when I could rejoice in intellectual pursuits unapologetically and with little distraction: the demands of adult life had not yet set upon me; the pragmatic implications of what I was learning were absent. I got to learn to learn. I didn't yet have to find a way to "use" what I was absorbing in this analysis of the words of minds so much greater than mine. I look back at the copious notes I took in the margins of texts and the synapses fire again, but they have certainly been dulled by choices I have made, by time, by the logistics of life. I know I can sharpen them again. This morning is proof. I believe I shall.

I am not much of a coffee drinker, and I tend to get up and go, rather than easing in to my day. But a late night and this pristine, chilly weather demanded an audience. That smart girl two decades ago and I applaud. 

On my way back

September 9, 2014

Yesterday I had lunch with a dear friend who I've known all my life. I hadn't seen her in a long while and had not sat down with her in nearly a decade. She is a beautiful, accomplished doctor who has traveled the world working with the impoverished. She has always downplayed her role in this world, but I know what I know. 

Another thing I like about this pal is that she thinks I am hilarious. Making anyone laugh is one of my favorite things to do (and something I haven't done much of lately) and as I regaled her with crazy tales of my former teaching life, she cracked up again and again. I felt like my old self. I felt like the person reflected in her laughter.

She has no inkling of the low lows and struggles of the past months, and I didn't want to tell her. I got nearly two hours of time travel to ME. And I wanted to stay. How fitting, then, that this picture was hanging next to our booth:  "she was on a journey back to her wings" read the soul of the pic.

As we parted ways and I walked through downtown, I was lighter. Maybe it was the wings...