November 16, 2012
I was thinking that I should write some more about where US is headed – but the possibilities seemed sufficiently grim for me to exercise avoidance: for-the-time-being. Then I thought I might delve into the monogamy-maintaining exercise of eating pussy; but thought I’d hold off on that for-a-bit as well. My college students had me wanting to write some more about our misplaced childhoods (which I MUST address in the near future). I also thought of doing a purely autobiographical piece about transitioning from full-time work to part-time work and acquiring a new rhythm for the day (a new routine if you will [I think I will get to that in my next article]). But this time around – I thought I’d devote some time to the horrors Big Steve C and I faced teaching in the Los Angeles County Court Schools…important stuff that emerged during our discussion on a recent fishing outing…
Big Steve suffered a near fatal heart attack about a-year-and-a-half ago (he wants to attribute wrapping his car around a telephone/power pole to narcolepsy), and, is still recovering from this traumatic episode. Because Big Steve is carrying way too many unnecessary pounds – I am going to hold with the heart attack theory over the narcoleptic episode, and, God knows – I’ve felt like having a heart attack more-than-once over-the-past-20-years-of-teaching in L.A. County’s Court Schools (while Big Steve has put in close to 15 years in our cesspool of a system). Speaking of cesspools, Big Steve and I didn’t have a single strike on-the-shores of Lake Elizabeth, while folks around us were pulling up crappies and catfish (they were all using night crawlers and we, well, we were using lures and ancient salmon eggs): which might have been symbolic that it is time to sink through the darkling plain into the fresh waters of the unconscious*, or to get with it and use the right bait.
I reminded Big Steve that when we went into work each day in the L.A. County Court Schools, we were abused by 3 different entities: the incarcerated students; probation; and, our own administration. We also had to maintain heightened alert for 300-minutes-per-day every day, lest some member from the three aforementioned entities fucked us in the ass! I saw the light bulb go off in Big Steve’s head – and he immediately had that all-relaxing “Aha”! For 15 years he’d been stressed out on 3 different levels with no support whatsoever and took all the shit upon himself, like I did…to survive…
*Matthew Arnold (perhaps my favorite poet who I’ve rarely [if ever] mentioned) suggested that we are born as mountain springs, and, in our childhood and youth, we explode down the mountainside joining with other small rivulets gaining progressively more strength and power until…until…we hit the darkling plain – where, swollen by the dictates of society, we slow down to a crawl and become tepid and stagnant lying listless in the swamp that is society. And that’s where we can spend the rest of our lives – rotting in the swamp waters of the darkling plain – going absolutely nowhere: we cannot reach the sea.
But Matthew Arnold also suggested that powerful freshwater rivers ran underground, and, if we could only surrender (thank you Sheila) to the futility of the darkling plain — we could sink into the ground filtering out those acquired impurities — eventually joining one of those mighty underground rivers that would carry us to the sea, and, by extension, eternity.
Well, Big Steve’s writing has stalled, as has my poetry – and now that we are retired – and out of the societal rat race – we have the chance of filtering out the toxins inadvertently acquired to “pay the bills.”
Time to surrender, time to sink, time to filter for more time to think.
Next Week: On Being Pussy-Whipped