What do we recall?

To be continued and edited.

This is a tough story to tell if only because I'm not sure I feel comfortable putting it out there. I don't see anything so awful about this part of the tale but perhaps moments that came before. Everything present is created by all these variations of what has happened that really understanding cause and effect is a matter of relative perspective. Anyway...

        I recall a fog of a moment walking. The bathroom door partway open. My step mom slumped over the toilet. She died that night, maybe right after but I know not before. They said when she fell over from there she hit her head. I don't know. That room was nothing but military hard brown tile and a fearsome steel dragon toilet paper holder. It's a pretty badass holder my dad made and mounted right in front of the toilet so you had to study it.
        Maybe I should have done more but I had tried many times before, this was not a new position for her to be in and I was still a real asshole. Shit like this probably helped me grow out of that but it takes a lifetime to change from ourselves. This is, perhaps, the root of the intellectual and artistic study.
       Life and booze had transformed her into a pitiful, frail, bitter version of herself. She lashed out in the most oddly piercing ways and stayed withdrawn in her last realms of intoxicated comfort.  Judy was a woman who did not believe that she had reached her station based upon what she knew she was capable of. I know so very little of her past but she grew up in Memphis in the middle of the rock and roll scene. It was a unique time and space that created her. Her friends were all nuts from Vietnam, drugs, and riots and she fell into the art world so they were avant-garde crazy. Somehow, she ended up at the museum and became the assistant director and my stepmother. It never really mattered to me to figure out why since it was life as it was presented to me. The drive to get work done and disregard of self care let her follow the busted route to a mean self destruction. It was a long slow death that I didn't enjoy; I had some great people around to help me along.
            My last real good memory with her was riding down to pick blueberries at a farm in Mississippi. It was a good drive on a warm day when the air felt clean but she always rolled with the windows up, AC cranked, and a long menthol. She wore the heaviest glasses and decided at some point it was best to go with it. Thick frames and big dark lenses to go with a black helmet of hair that she battled grey with constantly. My girlfriend at the time was with us, Judy adored her.
             The big oaks of Northern Mississippi were fully dressed in green to catch the sun and shade our way. The air wasn't dripping yet and so the lines weren't blurry. It still had the strong contrast to mean something.  My dad's second wife was content on the drive and that was all too rare through most of my time knowing her. She took the two-lanes down as much as possible roaming through the land in such a more natural pattern. We got there and she went to a little trailer hut and got us all buckets and so we set off around toward the patch. The first times I ever picked berries were in the Northeast and you get tasty little morsels from scrubby brushes making it a corner somewhere. Here were huge beautiful bushes with berries hanging in bunches like grapes. you could eat handfuls and fill your bucket at the same time. We stayed there for and hour or so and had so many berries. We got in her Toyota station wagon, meandered our way back, stopping at a gas station Baskin Robbins for malts.

First story in while.

A member of the homecoming court gets her purse while the basketball coach is exacerbated.

One of the better concrete chunk walls I have seen.

Directions

Poisoned to inconsequence.

“You want a belt?” The kind old man in the passenger’s seat asked.

“Naw, Im cool.”

It was another day oozing cold rain. Weather that can get you cold to your deepest soul and had been filling all the pores of the world up so that the ground smeared onto the pavement. Birds still looked bright and clean, perhaps more so than ever from contrast.

“Where are you headed?” 

“Work.” I didn’t want to expand further since I would have to admit to prior lies. We had crossed paths at the gas station.

He came into the store and first glimpse suggested that he may be homeless but definitely in need. There are so many more people suffering now or perhaps I can just see it more clearly but every other car in the lot looks like it is someone’s home and ramshackle reality sets in.

He had a thick white beard and a down vest, wore a duffel bag full of odds and ends. “Could I get a ride down Poplar?”

“I’m not headed that way.” This was the lie that made me give him a second chance for me to decide what to do.  

He asked once more while I paid for guess and so I asked, “Where are you trying to get to?”

“Poplar and Cleveland.”

I figured as much. This is an intersection with all stages of people moving about dependent on society to survive the struggle. It’s almost in the shadow of the VA and one needs no clearer reminder how we treat people than the hollowed out and broken men wandering, staggering, wheeling around. I can see it from my classroom.

Back in the vehicle, he noticed “Say, you got a CD player, I have some old school stuff. O’Jay’s, Johnny Taylor.” He sat, riding shotgun, with his duffle in his lap.

“I’m good.” 

“I wish I had a job.” I may as well learn some more. You know, reignite the discovery of details that once made me write.

“What do you do then?”

“I’m a diabled veteran.”

Damn.

“What happened?” I figured he may have been in Vietnam.

“Sarin gas, messed up a gland in my brain." The gentle old man with a clean white beard was ruined from ourselves.

“Where’d that happen?”

“Fort Campbell, Kentucky.”

That was a straight shot to my serenity.

“Can’t hold a job because my brain doesn’t work right.”

 I wanted to find a place where he could make his part but we had reached the intersection and I had to get back to work.

gonna see if I can make the top one a table.

Hate, hate, apathy, disregard and arrogance all flavored with a touch of cute pictures and a sense that someone else is at fault. We want so badly to believe that each of us understands the reason for the violent stupidity of this mess we see online and in life but really we each add as much to it as we wish we did not. It's just part of being stuck in this damned condition of living and our best efforts just make for it being more bureaucratic in its nefarious ways. It must for there is no good reason for people to still be burning down churches or denying loans based on superficial differences. The former is more clearly evil but the latter is a profound act of forced submissiveness.
I still believe in change and progress or I would not be able to do my job. Educating is a primary tool for any hope of decency and the possibility that tomorrow may be a place where some of our problems are solved. I am unwavering that I provide tools for young minds to succeed and perhaps excel. Speaking of which, I need to get back to learning about stuff since I got a new gig as a STEM teacher. It looks like I am supposed to have kids make all kinds of cool stuff and learn that way. Oddly enough, most people think I am ideally suited for that role but I feel more comfortable in the traditional method of learning. I enjoy the never ending challenge of a more Socratic dialogue than as a director of learning. What do students learn the most from? What is it that they find most valuable? One must learn through doing something and the only real way is to solve a problem or navigate a challenge. That stuff you pick up from a teacher or mentor is knowledge. Knowledge is fundamental and the recall of information is crucial but it is not learning in of itself. Knowing who said what in a book means little but making an informed argument with that statement is learning.
I believe I may go meditate on all this jabber and fall asleep thinking about a ton of stuff I should do tomorrow but won't.

More positive than negative at the time.

Another video. I'm not sure yet about adding flashy stuff since my students seem to operate best from my process of description, or breaking it down. I'd prefer to make them a little shorter but it ain't too long.

Another video of mathness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgCkQgJBXNU&feature=youtu.be

I'll be working on these a lot more. Hopefully I can learn to make it even more interesting but if you or someone you know needs some extra help with the old positives and negatives, here is a start.

Avoiding what I should be doing.

Someone did a willfully poor job by putting three screws in one hole. I have know clue how the person did it but it was a surprise as we worked on the door of our house.
The second image is hard to read but perhaps the greatest answer I have ever seen on an exam. He got some serious credit for the response.

Stories of the recent are less than fascinating as the areas around us don't know whether to be inspiring or aggravating.
Gene wasn't up to it. Not that it was any special moment, the day had no unique start and was quite the exact same in most ways as the rest but he stopped caring....It is just another attempt to start something that I don't plan on finishing..