dot something

The weather has been so fickle today. Fat drops, light ones, sun beams, gray. I worked for three hours in a fifth grade classroom at my old elementary school this morning. It's a strange, subtle feeling I get being at Westhoff. Normally when I walk into a school the secretary asks me if I'm a student or a sub. They spit a little laugh into my face, and say, "Oh, good, the room's right over there." At Westhoff the office lady is still the same. She enquires about my family, and has a lovely smile.

Today, out of 35 students, one was Egyptian, two were Caucasian, and the rest were of Asian descent. I'm not sure what the exact racial background was when I went there. Indeed, the "make-up" has changed; the majority is vast. My college friend Stella told me she read in the LA Times that Chinese diplomats have moved to Walnut to learn about our cities government for the benefit of their own. I haven't researched this further, but I do wonder what makes Walnut distinctly attractive in this respect.

When I was in high school a news station came to report the utopian-like diversity of our community. I recall writing my essay to get into college with this vision of my background in mind. Growing up in Walnut instilled in me and my peers a great sense of multiculturalism. I feel reluctant to put it out there, but I’m curious if this sense is still enabled in environments such as the one at my old elementary school.

A few months ago I was heading out to a spot called the Library Bar with a dear friend of mine and some others. One girl acted shocked that I could’ve grown up in Walnut. As they spoke in their native language, I recall one of them saying, “She must be used to hearing it, living in Walnut.”

I didn’t feel awkward as an outsider. In fact, I felt very much on the inside, even if they did speak frankly about the difference in our descents. I’m sure the minorities in the classroom today feel the same. They may not know an Asian language or the family dynamics of their peers. But I’m certain they still view Walnut as their community.

I found it interesting last week. A teacher at another elementary school in the area had a pamphlet for the new “Buddhist church” to open on a street lined with other religious institutions of Christian origin. Some community members had voiced their concern about the architecture of the building—would it be as prominently Asian looking as the Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights? Thankfully to some, the new facility would look more like a community center than a religious building. And what do you know, it’s also being called a church.

A friend of my mom recently wrote a book about Barack Obama’s position in the upcoming presidential election. The author, Shelby Steele, marks Obama a “bound man,” incapable of rising above the “politics of guilt and innocence generated by our painful racial history.”

In conversation with my grandpa this weekend, a former superintendent of schools through the eras of segregation and integration, he exposed his view that there are simply too many Americans who cannot see beyond the color of Obama’s skin, thereby making him unelectable. If America were to elect Obama, we may be viewed by the world as a nation who’s defied the force of racism.

I’d like to continue in my thoughts. Unfortunately I must squirm in the suburban traffic to get to my next location…

dot 6

I'm doubting the ability to type with fingers as frigid as mine. Why a home is so cold is beyond me. Today was spent with the children; sweet, concerned, conniving children. I was roving, meaning that wherever I was needed to relieve a teacher, I would be. 1st graders, pasting standarized testing scores into student files, 4th graders, 2nd graders. A day that sucks a certain juice out of me.

After an hour with questioning, "low group" 9 year olds, all willing and desperate to know the division of decimals without even understanding 20-18, or 5x3, I then went to count beans with 7 year olds also struggling with the concepts of adddition. It struck me as draining. The 7 year olds' teacher had an incentive method though. Get an answer, collect a pretzel! This seemed appealing at first, directing the children with pretzels. It quickly got old. Especially when I wanted to bark at the girl who asked in her sweet, syrupy voice But if we do this, can we get a pretzel?

"ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO ASK THOSE SORTS OF QUESTIONS...YOU?"

They expect me to know their names. Sometimes for the naive ones, nametags provide them with such disbelief. I can read your mind, sweet one. Then a saavier kid will chime in and let the truth hang out.

I was enquiring to my boyfriend the other day if he remembered when he lost his belief in Santa Claus. He recalled the moment sharply, when Heather DeFeather had blabbed the truth out in class. Crushed. My student Alex eagerly asked me the other day what I got from Santa Claus this year. Money and some earrings. That's it? A creme brulee machine. HAHAH, money! he laughed. I had a feeling he was squirming away his loss of faith.

Spending an hour with a 7 year old and then another with a 4 year old every day can be something else. I'd like to report that Brian, the little one, presented phonemic awareness today. I was peachy. A is for Apple and Q is for Queen. I won't deny that it was the Hooked on Phonics program that made it all transpire. I decided today was the day we focus on letter sounds instead of names, and with the flashy computer screen and power mouse controller, he was on his way. It was enlivening to be a part of. Then he demanded I read two books, instead of barely getting through one. Hurricanes and tornadoes, topics that he fancies.

Now I'm watching Jack Nicholson in his sexy years as a cuckold's detective in Chinatown. The bath is seducing me with all its heat energy potential. I'm curious what happened to the popularity of a broach.

dot five

on this winter day in january i'm lying out in the sun. green mountains, a long white picket fence in the distance, glaring blue pool water in my short view. dynamic clouds.

i took an exam this morning to become a teacher of adolescents. quite a long, fat exam. rich with important knowledge, i now conclude.

to know the colonization of California, the science of a lunar eclipse, the necessary cognitative development of a child. to be familiar with post- World War II economy, the personification in Neruda's prose, the discussion of force and gravity.

let's hope i passed.

in the next one-half year of my life, i am free to do whatever i want. in this moment, i believe i know what that means. things sometimes can become muddled. however right now is where i ought to be.

dy·nam·ic /daɪˈnæmɪk/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[dahy-nam-ik] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective Also, dy·nam·i·cal.

1. pertaining to or characterized by energy or effective action; vigorously active or forceful; energetic: the dynamic president of the firm.
2. Physics.
a. of or pertaining to force or power.
b. of or pertaining to force related to motion.
3. pertaining to the science of dynamics.
4. of or pertaining to the range of volume of musical sound.
5. Computers. (of data storage, processing, or programming) affected by the passage of time or the presence or absence of power: Dynamic memory must be constantly refreshed to avoid losing data.
6. Grammar. nonstative. –noun
7. a basic or dynamic force, esp. one that motivates, affects development or stability, etc.

what a multi-faceted word.

dot four

Tonight I feel compelled to make a dot on the non-cohesive thoughts flowing through my head. I am reading a novel called "What is the What" about a boy named Valentino Achek Deng who walks through civil war-torn Sudan, lives in refugee camps in Kenya, and eventually makes it to America to be coldly robbed in his apartment in Atlanta.

The content of my pre-bedtime novel has a tendency to seep into my dreams. The other night I was tirelessly defending myself against a cruel man with a shot gun. Throughout the dream scene I held a purple shot gun in my pocket but refused to take it out in fear that if the attacker were to see my purple shot gun, he would feel all the more obliged to shoot me.

Many people tell me my dreams are intense. While studying to be certified as a sexual assault crisis counselor, I lived through a variety of rape scenes first person, waking in a state of relief. Had I actually experienced the trauma while conscious, the affect on my persona would be vastly different. The assaults were vicarious; a product of curiosity and study.

For some reason I'm reminded of the BFG (Big Friendly Giant.) I can't remember much from the Ronald Dahl book, but I do recall the BFG emerging during an hour of the night when every other being in the scope of the story is fast asleep, tapped out from any conscious state. Reading this novel as a child, I recall wondering if such an hour or segment of time truly did exist. Can all people, at once, truly be asleep? At this moment of black peace, is there solace in the nothingness of the unconscious?

It's hard to tell if knowing you are one thing or another really aids in one's discovery of a moment, a purpose, a problem. You may know that you are influenced by your blood, running strong with alcoholism, a harsh temper, a frugal hand, but can this awareness ultimately contribute to the achievement of some sort of nirvana?

I've jumped off any sort of train of thought.

A dot: do you know who you are? Are you found in your dreams, or in your waking hours?

dot three

A brown haired girl with slightly slit eyes and plaqued teeth could not bear life in the 4th grade today. As thirty children pounded into the classroom, Kayla's wails could be seen and heard from playgrounds away.

"They are...all...making fun-nn-n of meeeee!" she let her voice trickle out as her body wretched in turmoil. "They said Ms. Sha said to go to the end of the line, but you did not say to go to the end of the line, but they all said Ms. Sha said, and you didn't. You didn't. You...hoo...didn't."

Her personal horror lingered on for many minutes.

"Hates you, but why?" In the four hours I spent with this kid, every encounter she had would result in a confession that she or he was an affront to her existence. In need of reinforcement, she would ceaselessly tattle. Every student surrounding her, a monster out to eat her alive. On the rare chance she could connect with one, they'd be unwillling to connect back, because she had treated them like a monster moments before.

At 8 years old, could it just be Kayla's peers that pressed her to the point of isolation? Was this just a tale of the fourth grade nothing, or would she forever perceive the people around her as cruel enemies?

I ran out of gas on Saturday on my way up to Santa Barbara. Barely rolling off the freeway, I double parked in a left turn lane of a major boulevard, locked my car, and ran across the oncoming traffic to the oasis Shell station. Before I even had to strategize a solution, a middle-aged man wearing dirty pants and scruff yelled out his car window, "You need a hand?" I would have loved one at that point. He reparked his old cruiser, removed a small gas can from his trunk, and walked up to me. "Come on now, you hear, we don't have much time before the tow-truck'll get you." I followed along, willing to do whatever he said in order to get my idle car off the street.

"You know, I'm not gunna do this for nothing," he muttered. I began to question his ulterior motives, but vowed to keep it cool.

"I can give you some money if you like." He didn't respond. In a hurry, he led me across four lanes. I cautiously unlocked my car and opened the gas tank.

"You know, I'm always getting screwed over. The whole damn world just screws me over."

"Well maybe you are in for some good karma," I replied, not knowing what else to say.

This wasn't what he wanted to hear.

"Yeah right. You know something about me, I was in the military. I was in the damn American military, and they put a chip in me. Now they are watching my every move, all the time. Watching me, and screwing everything up." I stayed mute, listening to his troubled words.

"Hey, you think I can borrow $5 dollars." He had rescused me from my pickle. Of course.

"Turn it on and off and on and off." I toggled the ignition. "No!" he screamed, "On and off. Don't start the engine!"

The car roared up. I rolled off, leaving him with genuine words of gratitude. Had he believed them, I'll never know.

Dot two.

I am sucking on a Dum-Dum, thinking about how enthusiastic I was to describe the necessity for proper-nouns at work. The little boy with his desk situated in front of me had a black eye appearing to be pierced by a sword. Sword of what sorts? Teaching the genre of mystery, I'd have put it forth as evidence, the bloody blot on his eye. "Too simple," he replied at the judgement of the detective in the four paged story we were slowly reading. The genre of mystery--bores you? You are uncomfortable with the way I am not familiar, guilty with impatience and a short attention span. If having received the chance to ask the detective, Encyclpedia Brown, if he had a girlfriend, it would be your question number one. But you don't number the question, maybe you find it arbitrary. Nine years of experience living, and what really irks you? Did receiving the bloody blot on your eye hurt? It pisses me off how I can't press return and get a space. But at least I get to chose whenever I get to suck on a Dum-Dum. However there are many hours in my life when I feel so choiceless. Radio commercials, red lights, radical children. Or maybe I love radical children. It's strange how something in life is received as positive or negative. A career, notably. Do you give me jived up eyebrows when I say I will become a fire dancer. For life. When you live and work in education, it becomes evident that the politics of the committee, litigators, and board fuels a faucet of need and greed. This is the knowledge (perspective) received by evidenced acts and cases. Is it easy to get what you want when you want it, with the litigators fighting for you to get what you want because they think it's what you need (pocketbooks or morals.) The holidays are coming, they tell us that the days for our buying are numbered. Spend money on Christmas trees, let the suspense of the tidings hinge you to the ground. Alibi for the children innocents. Directly, these expectations are important to children. Everyday they harbor them. "Are we going to play a... game? Can we have some free time...now? Where is the...candy?" Candy for what? Not paying attention. Not having an attention span. Being concerned with ulterior motives. Most natural for this breed. A generation of fantastics. Nothing but punchy interchanges and actions. Overgeneralization, occurring. Suits of varying identifiers nonetheless, that I am not credentialed to identify. Devotion of a substitute teacher,

Dot One

There is a large elephant sitting in this room, watching me drink apricot wheat drink.

It is sexless, doesn't say much.

We've watched the flat screen. So far it's been epiphinal moments, with lots of blood and blowing leaves.

I see all it's skin, reminding me of wet cement.

Big elephant, why does your parched ear feel like cotton upon my brow?

When you kiss me like so, I hear the Big Bands swing.

Red puffs of lips, greased parted man hair.

Love, really.

It makes me want to die when the grass grows right under your feet, in the house.

Death by amazement.

I shout, "How did you do that?"

All you give back is the tired look of a tutor.

It's okay, I've said, time and time again.

You, large elephant, don't need to explain a thing.