After school yesterday, I talked to [a fellow teacher] about the freshmen I had in in-school suspension and how they don’t get it – they don’t get that they need to shut up and do the time and not get obnoxious about it. (Drew Magary [writer at Defector.com] said age 14 was hard – I mean, when his daughter was 14, she was hard to parent.) … I thought this morning on walk (see, these ideas from, what, nearly three hours ago, come back as I write) and how [Drew] had “a take” on St. Andrews golf course bridge-patio. He’s aware, I’m sure, that he forms an opinion just to have an opinion to write about. He doesn’t deeply care. He’s a philosopher, or maybe a sophist, in this way. He also wrote novels. I also wrote a novel! I have no intention of publishing it. I have little sense that it coheres, that it’s anything but loose free writes – fiction free writes, which aren’t even historically valuable, as nonfiction freewrites are.
9:13 clock time – I think I was gonna add that those freshmen I had in ISS might have behaved better had they known me, been my students … but, of course, you know, I gotta be humble – even were I a Nobel Lit. Prize winner, freshmen kids wouldn’t know who I was – or if they did, they might try to piss me off.
[From school journals of Weds., 8 Feb. 2023, 1st hour.]
MonkeyMoonMachine 