Category Archives: Transcribed from life

‘Water. Water. Yep, that’s it. Bye, love you.’

Posted on May 6, 2020 | Leave a comment

She must be a S_____ coach—she is wearing a gray shirt with red collar and stripe from collar down shoulder. She says it’s about “40 from S_____”—40 minutes—

And where was I? Oh, the camping dude said he takes his kids camping because he camped as a kid—and this Gray Shirt says she’d like to be back for 4th hour today … and keep that class on same schedule as others—”15 teachers out at the high school”—and 5-6 each building—”GOOD IDEA,” she sarcasted. “Our building has sickness, like, crazy.” “30% of our kids gone.” She’s snippy, but she seems to think she’s interesting and her complaining is interesting.

Wow, look at me being snarky—and judgy. But this lady is the one who had to listen to the Python girl last break. “What kind of superintendent thinks a district our size could cover 28 subs in one day?” for some training for the teachers. “It’s insane to have” so many teachers gone.

And back to me. Why did this camping guy brag about how he takes his kids camping and how “that’s not us”?

This lady also said she didn’t get the “awards were postponed” [message]. Gray Lady still complains about the many people gone for training: “That’s what that’s for—that’s what those are for,” and she doubts that “some guy from Stevenson” is gonna be able to speak to S___ [school’s] particular situation.

“So? You don’t wash those. Water. Water. Yep, that’s it,” says Gray Lady to her phone. “Bye, love you.”

“‘Can you wash suede heels?’ Yeah, she’s a freshman” at college, says Gray Lady.

[From journal of Thurs. 14 March 2019, Journal 300, page 139-42]

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Agriculture Day 2018

Posted on April 22, 2018 | Leave a comment

Here are pictures and poems made at my high school’s agriculture day, 20 April:

The nose of a “shambling” bovine, as Odysseus calls them. His men also kill cattle belonging to the Sun God, and it doesn’t go well: “The cattle were dead already …
and the gods soon showed us all some fateful signs—the hides began to crawl, the meat, both raw and roasted, bellowed out on the spits, and we heard a noise
like the moan of lowing oxen.” My sophomore students went to Ag Day for a field trip to see animals that, in The Odyssey, were killed, eaten, ridden out of caves, and created from men.

“EAT! shouted a curly-haired boy as he shoved a handful of hay toward the cattle — as if cows should listen to him. “Gotta be slow around them,” said an Ag Day worker, who also advised that the beasts may not be hungry. Not long after,  Cannon steer eats hay and another boy screams, “IT’S EATING! IT’S EATING!”

Little Brian kept his attention focused on his mud puddle and his truck, but he grew tense wondering when mother would prop Gwen back up and they could act like a normal family again.

I wore my winter coat and a stocking cap on this cool spring day. One of my students told me, “You kinda look like an elf.” “I can live with that,” I said.

Odysseus and crew kill and eat about 109 of these for one meal.

Shiloh goat on red leash passes between Shelby’s jean legs.

The trucks are mired in cocoa powder this cold spring.

“Don’t touch anything unless you have permission from someone in blue,” said one of the blue-shirted Ag Day helpers to visiting elementary-school students.

Patty calf.

Patty’s owner said Jersey calves like Patty have big eyes and “dish face” — kids think they’re deer.

Odysseus’s men were turned into these critters by the enchantress Circe.

A crossed-arms boy supervises the pigs but he too is in the trailer-cage.

The Odyssey didn’t say much about chickens.

“They can’t really fly so much as fall slightly slower,” said an Ag Day staffer to someone’s question about whether chickens can fly.

Cows out on the coffee-grounds pasture.

The ag teacher’s young son hugged a lamb’s neck and said, “this is the only one I can catch.” A high school staffer said he thought the boy could also catch the other two lambs in the small pen, too.

Odysseus’s men rode out of the Cyclops’s cave underneath some sheep. Those sheep were, one hopes, taller than these sheep, and had more wool to hang onto.

Sheep would do terrible work in a creative writing class — they’d all be copying each other, I said. That’s true, said my creative writing student, as we looked at three lambs. I don’t know if it’s true, I said, but it’s fun to think.

The Odyssey didn’t mention llamas.

Llama comes closer.

Llama closer still.

Llama closing in!

Llamas at a pose.

Tim had earned his college degree and was ready for his future to begin, but for now, he’s back home, standing in tar and waiting to shovel the sh*t of levitating cows.

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Posted in Photos, Transcribed from life

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We write in place: My students and I in a hallway at school

Posted on February 25, 2018 | Leave a comment

From our school announcements of 23 February: 
Matt Hagemann decided to let his creative writing students feed the muse, so they left their classroom and sat in the north-facing second floor hall facing away from the windows. “It was a free writing assignment,” Hagemann said. “I told them to write about whatever they noticed.”
Hard at work were Hagemann, Riley Lodico and Cody Thompson. Noah Mershon and Angel Aguirre were taking notice at the time the photo was snapped.
Photo and caption by Vicki Snyder-Chura.

Where and when: In RTHS hallway outside Counseling Center, 2nd floor, facing windows to the north, Tues. 20 Feb. 2018, 8:31 a.m., 1st hour

I’ve never sat here and written before, but here I am, with a creative writing class. There’s a featureless gray sky — though there look to be a few horizontal features off to northern horizon. Most of my students sit on the radiator across the hall. They’re facing south — I wanted to see north. A woman holding what looked like the phone cover to her ear while the phone bounced alongside. It seems odd. Maybe I didn’t see it well.  There are reflections — well, silhouettes — of my students on the floor. There are waves in the reflections — the terrazzo floor’s not quite flat. Phone-ear woman and a young woman leave the Counseling Center together. Two people wearing glasses and carrying books come in thru east-end doors, walk a bit, then run into Counseling Center.

 

Where and when: In RTHS hallway outside Counseling Center, 2nd floor, facing wall to the south, Tues. 20 Feb. 2018, Noon:50 p.m., 8th hour

There’s water splashing on the rubbery roof over the student entrance — same place I saw ice last week. Mr. Oldenburg just passed me headed west to the teacher lunchroom. I don’t eat in lunchroom. … I heard a shout or shriek from the student-lunching area, a shout-shriek. … I see a couple fans spinning above the student commons. Some fans aren’t running. There’s a thereness to this school building — it doesn’t have to do anything (like any object), like I feel pressured to do when I’m here at school. C. and N. are sitting at the left and right sides, respectively, of the top half of the sans serif T shape painted on the wall. I forgot about these letters when I was sitting on that side of the hallway. It’s kinda funny to see these partial letters and to realize that these letters aren’t written to me but to someone much further away, that we’re too zoomed in to see what’s being spelled.

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Posted in Teaching writing, Transcribed from life

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Posting Exuberantly

Posted on September 16, 2017 | Leave a comment

I thought this today: I’d like to share here on the blog ideas that pop into my mind, but not because I think the ideas themselves are all that valuable. Some of these ideas may be useful, at some times, to some people, but what I’d really like to show is how cool it feels to be open to new ideas and how rewarding it feels to practice creativity daily (mostly in the act of freewriting my journals). I don’t want to formulate some argument in support of these feelings — I think I may just post exuberantly.

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Posted in From the journals, Transcribed from life, Writing

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Water-splash and deep-fryer fat: Freewriting at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, lakefront

Posted on June 25, 2017 | Leave a comment

My right knee at the lakeshore. Photo shows lakewall and view east. 16 June 2017

Sky boat headed to the lake north of where I was sitting at the picnic table. Brick apartments/condos are to left side of photo. 16 June 2017.

Friday, 16 June 2017, 1:43 p.m., Lakeside at Geneva Lake — it’s about 15 feet in front of me, east of me. To my right is a little tented sales counter for Jerry’s Majestic Marine (whose sign has these bulleted points: boat sales, boat storage/service, pontoon boat rentals, waverunner rentals, parasail rides), and slightly to my right are boats at Pier 4 (near where my wife, M, and I were sitting an hour or so ago, before she went to her meeting at the Abbey a couple blocks west). I took pics of Lake Geneva/Geneva Lake — a dead fish with algae — for my blog post “Famous things close up” (approximate title, from 2015) — and there are two women in bikinis at the back end of a boat off Pier 4. And before coming to this spot, I went to my park spot a bit north of here, where I sat and wrote a few years ago — jeez, several years ago by now — but the benches weren’t in shade. This was the little park across from public (I think) boat launch, and next to the 5-story brick apartments/condos. I was reading while sitting here for 20 mins or so, reading about politics-as-identity making compromise hard, and Trump tweets, and etc. But it’s too damn nice here. I heard something like splashing over the concrete lake-wall. Writing left-handed is slowing me down (as it usually does) in a way that seems fitting to this lovely day: sunny, a few puffy in-the-distance clouds, a light breeze from behind me. If I lived within walking distance of a big lake, I wonder how often I’d come down and sit. Once in a while I get a smell of deep-fryer fat from the restaurants across the street behind me (Gordy’s Boathouse  and, south, Chuck’s Lakeshore Inn).

There passes, from my left to my right, a big sightseeing boat, perhaps the boat that delivers mail to piers, as I saw years ago on CBS Sunday Morning, I think it was. This boat passed right at about 2 p.m. I think I saw it about an hour ago, too, when M and I were here together. Yeah, I’m not hearing the Big Ben bell sounds, and we heard those at 1 p.m. And it really is nice — the water splash sometimes sounds like Gulf waves (We were in Florida just under a year ago. I talked to that UK couple about Brexit vote, I think.) It felt silly to read while outside here but writing feels OK. When we heard bells last time, M told me that there were mindfulness bells at the conclave (the annual religious gathering she went to when young) every half hour: when bells sounded, everyone was supposed to take a moment of quiet for mindfulness.

There are some young (late teen? early 20s?) women in a Jeep behind me, and there have been others. I look but then I remind myself that it’s not cool.

I never quite got into the writing mood this morning.

By the way, I’m at a picnic table that’s covered with a vinyl-canvas cover. The next picnic table has bench covers, too, with snaps.

“The pineapple never made it,” said one girl in a group walking past. “We had TWO pineapples,” said another. Someone in a second group of girls walking past said, “we had a joke that her hashtag was ‘Kate’s vagina.’”

These young women now could be — I’m old enough for them to be — my own children. I have a book bag. I’m a dad-nerd writing out here at a marina, near a beach, on a lovely day — though not quite as uncool as that 60-ish dude in black suit and carrying leather briefcase.

It’s easy, while sitting here, to let go of my fretting about publishing — which fretting is kinda dumb, anyway.

Gordy’s has a Boat Sales storefront, and a Proshop, and the Boat House, and Cobalt Lounge and Surf Shack — Gordy’s has quite the presence. Each Gordy’s business has a navy-blue with white-lettering awning.

I had a thought this morning while sitting in our car, just outside of our garage, that I’m alive and I can observe, and if I died then, no more observations would be made, and that my writing could reflect my being alive — my writing can be new every day (something like that, which now feels banal).

Down the street, a woman in a black bikini strides into one of Gordy’s businesses.

“Travis, why? … You were swimming and I thought you were a girl,” said one dude to another dude who seems to have his hair braided in 2 lines down the back of his head. A yellow dog shakes off water and then gets leashed.

Sunbathers out on Pier 4 boat seem gone. Here’s a white-haired man carrying a bag of ice by its drawstring. He’s very tan in the chest.

I’d like to talk about being here. I wanna talk about the brick apartment building — it’s not all that special-looking but it seems special just because I remember it from previous visits, because I associate it with this particular place, which is a particular place.

I hear a squeaky cranking sound–a dude at Pier 4 cranks down a jet ski platform.

Last thing before I walk back to meet M: It’s 2:47. I hear the dull roar of boats out a ways, the wind in my ears, slap of water. And I keep thinking that what I write about this place is still writing about this place — it’s not the same as being here and not-thinking, not analyzing at all.

And I want to tie this up by saying something about how I’m experiencing things. I experience things and I can write about them and this may not seem profound to write but it feels profound. I can experience new things each day I’m alive. I can have new ideas each day — each moment of crystallized consciousness — that I’m alive.

And yet, this too is just an idea, and the brick building and the lakeshore and the biting fly and trespassing spider. And even I, at this place on this day, don’t need ideas!

And so I leave off — not having written something that satisfies. But that’s OK, too, of course.

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Trees never get lost in the woods: March notes from pocket pages

Posted on March 31, 2017 | Leave a comment

♦ Nothing in the physical world remembers! There is no material or physical past. Things are; there’s no were, no record of how things used to be. 28 Feb. & 3 March

Willow buds appear on 2 March after a couple weeks of warm weather. After a month of cool weather, the buds are still about the same.

♦ The most useful thing to keep in mind is that there’s nothing you have to keep in mind. 6 March.

♦ To will something, to mean a message, to assert a claim — these acts are abstract? Or merely private? Or are these the same thing? 6 March

It’s not every Regional Office of Education that has its own “Soiled Linen” chute as our local ROE, located in a former nunnery, does. 3 March

♦ There’s no off-switch on a person or a dog or cat (or any living thing) — we’re alive until we’re dead. Our consciousnesses are continuous, until they aren’t. 6 March

♦ I (and maybe most people) seem to play various personas or roles in various social situations. I play the responsible employee, the considerate neighbor, the respectful customer, etc. Maybe it’s only with my best friends that I can let go of playing anyone beside myself — and maybe that’s one way to define intimacy. 8 March

♦ We learn to be the right level of weird? I don’t endorse “normal” kids picking on the “weird” kids — but as a weird person myself, I feel I’ve learned, through positive (such as making others laugh) and negative (such as being ignored, being labeled “weird”) responses how to be socially appropriate. 8 March

♦ I should not value myself by the ideas I’ve already saved (by writing them down), no matter how clever. I remind myself that my ideas aren’t me. 9 March.

♦ “I love when people print stuff out — it’s just so warm,” said my printer-adjacent student. 9 March

Electricity infrastructure, downtown Byron. 30 March

♦ Each person has to learn wisdom anew. Each young person’s mind is new to the world and has to make sense of things. But with this need to learn comes an opportunity: each person might come up with new wisdom! 15 March

♦ “I really wanna see a ghost. I just don’t know where to look,” said student. 15 March.

♦ A tree becomes a what it is — its particular size and shape — in a particular context, at least partly in reaction to other trees and things around it. Of course, this could be a metaphor for how each particular person develops, too. 15 March

♦ I might get lost in a woods — “these trees all look alike,” etc. — but a tree never gets lost, and not just because it’s rooted to a place. Each tree doesn’t need to know where it is in relation to others. (This might almost be a contradiction to the previous note, but not quite.) 15 March

♦ Why did I listen to myself — have confidence in my own judgments and gut instincts — for most of my growing up? An independent streak? 16 March

♦ “I have conversations with myself all the time,” said student. “You might be having one now,” said teacher. 17 March

♦ Perhaps one could learn all about songwriting from extensive study of just one song, or learn all about writing poetry from one poem, by seeing what can be varied. 18 March

West side of city building (left) and grocery store (right), Byron, Illinois. 28 March

♦ I’m thinking lately that I’m glad I’m not a performer, like a musician, but a creative artist, who can be new, not repeating myself on stage every night. 19 March

♦ “At least he was an alcoholic who had a lot of sex,” said student of writer Ernest Hemingway. 20 March

♦ “Maybe I’ll revive her,” said student, of a character who had died in her story. 21 March

♦ Part of my maturing, of figuring out who I am, has been learning that I’m not like most of the people I have compared myself to. I don’t need to judge myself as inadequate; I’m simply different, and no comparison is needed. 21 March

♦ “I’m so confuzzled,” said student, going on to explain that she was both “confused” and “puzzled.” 23 March

♦ A word versus its absence — there’s a question attendant to each word, an asterisk on each word, perhaps, that calls each word into doubt. Why did the author use that word, and not some other? Each word is not necessary but arbitrary. 24 March

Here’s a bluntly titled book published in 1919.

The contents of “How to Do Things,” including 5 pages on “Babies and Children.”

♦ Two of my college roommates and I recently met up at a funeral — in our early 40s, we each now have our own responsibilities — our own niches of jobs, houses, families, etc. Though we didn’t have these same things when we were back in college, we did still have particular places we needed to be, plans to carry out. Our niches were never physical locations, really, so much as concepts? 27 March

♦ There’s more to being alive than words and ideas. I don’t want to be just a supplier of words to others. My life, my being alive, is more than whatever I write, of course. 27 & 29 March

♦ Nostalgia for ’80s pop songs — somehow it seems there was innocence then, which there was, among all the things that were going on. Perhaps we focus on the problems (in the world, as well as in our own own present lives) and we don’t pay attention to the innocence and goodness that’s also always there — that must be there, in order for nostalgia to be able to find it. 28 March

Buzzards on the Byron water tower. 28 March

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Posted in From the pocket pages, Nonfiction, Photos, Transcribed from life

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‘Something brilliant and beautiful’: A week’s worth of notes

Posted on February 5, 2017 | Leave a comment
It looks like my town may have a vampire problem. 4 Feb. 2017

It looks like my town may have a vampire problem. 4 Feb. 2017

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“Mister (pause), yeah,” is how I was greeted by a student who’s new to my class this semester and couldn’t recall my name. 30 Jan.

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“I got really mad so then I ate candy to spite her,” said my student, about the nurse telling her not to eat candy because the candy had made her tongue bleed. So, student said, she went home and ate candy. 31 Jan.

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“People who aren’t friends don’t read each others’ poems,” my student  told her friend-but-temporarily-not-friend, after not-friend had asked to see my student’s poem. 1 Feb.

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Ice stacked and muddied after a flood. 4 Feb. 2017

Ice stacked and muddied after a flood. 4 Feb. 2017

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“It’s gonna be a good Friday!” said my student when he came into class Thursday morning. He seemed genuinely surprised when we corrected him. 2 Feb.

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Later that same Groundhog Day, student said the namesake animal had seen his shadow so “we’ve got 6 more months of winter!” She then corrected months to weeks.

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Ice floes and geese in the Rock River at Byron. 4 Feb.

Ice floes and geese in the Rock River (and my dog near the river) at Byron. 4 Feb.

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When student came back from the bathroom, classmate asked, “Did everything come out OK?” 2 Feb.

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After a student accused someone of being “gold-digging” because she was wanting to marry a wealthy person, I sarcasted, “Yeah, why not date losers? ‘Unemployed? Got three fingers? Come on down!'” And then my students discussed which three fingers it’d be best to have. As if such a mutilation were a choice, student asked others, “Which ones are you keeping?” A second student said he’d keep thumb, middle finger, and pinkie, but student three said the extended middle finger “would start a lot of fights, though.” 2 Feb.

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After I said my prizes for my class’s poetry bingo game would be “something brilliant and beautiful,” student quipped, “Is it me?” 2 Feb.

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Reading the Bible symbolically, not literally (because if the Bible is read literally, issues arise, such as are Cain and his wife practicing incest?), could be like how our dreams don’t always make sense. Perhaps fantastic narratives and symbolic stories arose from dreams? 2 Feb.

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Cups in a chain-link fence.

Cups in a chain-link fence.

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Cups in fence, profile.

Cups in fence, profile.

 

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“Oh, buddy, it’s fantastic”: This week in notes

Posted on January 29, 2017 | Leave a comment
View southwest toward sunset from Hedge Road, 5 p.m. today, 29 Jan.

View southwest toward sunset from Hedge Road, 5 p.m. today, 29 Jan.

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When I judge or criticize other people or things, my judging is analytical, abstract, comparing some particular thing to some generalized standard. It’s a part of my ego, my getting-around-in-the-world mind. I don’t judge when in meditative or sleepy mind.  23 Jan. 2017

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“Molly, do NOT get diarrhea,” said a veterinary office worker to a white-muzzled old beagle wearing a pink-striped sweater. 23 Jan.

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Seeing lights on in houses as I drove home this winter evening, I thought how cozy the homes looked, and how cozy my own house probably looks from outside. But I don’t don’t often feel that cozy when I’m in my house, and maybe that’s because when I’m home taking in TV or online news, stories about problems everywhere (or anywhere) outside my house pull my attention away from my calm, cozy home and life. 23 Jan.

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Making meaning — and not just receiving others’ meanings — matters. There’s the essay, the try — we write essays to try to understand things, I told my students this week.

The big meaning, of course, is how one should best live. (It seems a little banal to state it this way, but “how to best live” could include practical ethics, useful metaphysics, everyday epistemology, etc.)

I find it easy to fall into writing about meaning. I’ve been tending toward sticking to facts — to basic observations — so as to let readers see meanings for themselves. 23 Jan.

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A small mammal path at the edge of a parking lot southeast of Riverside-Perryville intersection in Rockford-Loves Park, Ill. Sat. 28 Jan.

A small mammal path at the edge of a parking lot southeast of Riverside-Perryville intersection in Rockford-Loves Park, Ill. Sat. 28 Jan.

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All day long, we interpret others — we try to understand the actions and words of other people we see, meet, or interact with. These interpretations are theories we create and then employ to guide our interactions with these others. These theories can be judged as useful or not (rather than true or false), depending on how successfully I interact with others.

Truth is a judgment of a theory against an external reality, which we can never actually get to, since everything we know about external reality has to come in through our minds. But usefulness I can judge within my own experience. Whatever theories seem to me to work, I’ll call these “useful.” 24 Jan.

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Meanings, theories, interpretations — these aren’t as real was what actually happened. 24 Jan.

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All judgments are comparisons, and all comparisons are arbitrary (not necessary), so therefore, all judgments are arbitrary. Even when I call someone an asshole for how he drives, he’s probably not really and completely an asshole. 24 Jan.

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My blog posts where I just report a quote without explaining it: my audience is older people who don’t need a full explanation of why a quote is funny or interesting, like a child would. Adults must already think interpretively more than kids do. 24 Jan.

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A place at the corner of a gas station lot NE of Riverside-Perryville intersection, Rockford-Loves Park. Sat. 28 Jan., about noon.

A place I could be for a while. Probably nobody but the lawn crew every goes to this spot, at the northwest corner of a gas station lot, but one could. It’s not a place that we typically think of as a place, like we’d think of going to a house, or a restaurant, or a park, etc., but this, too, IS a place. Northeast of Riverside-Perryville intersection, Rockford-Loves Park. Sat. 28 Jan., about noon.

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“If I’m talking and not thinking about what I’m saying, I’ll say everything wrong,” said student. 24 Jan.

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A door in the backside of the building at the northeast corner of Riverside-Perryville. This is across a little parking lot from the gas station corner photo. 28 Jan.

A door in the back side of the building at the northeast corner of Riverside-Perryville. This is across a little parking lot from the gas station corner photo above. Though this side of the building isn’t much to look at, it’s just as real — as touchable, as there — as the lovely front side of building is. 28 Jan.

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Everything can mean something. Everything can tell something, symbolize something (my obsessive mind, anyway, can interpret almost anything, which can be exhausting). Not general topics like “pencil” but THIS pencil: Who owned it? How’d it get here? We can play detective. Of course, with my practice at interpretation, as informed by my experiences and my sensibility, I’m probably better at making meaning than my sophomore students are — but I still want them to try making meaning through their essays built from a session spent observing in the school hallway. 25 Jan.

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Creating meaning as a writer and as a reader — two different acts of meaning creation using the same words, the same text. 25 Jan.

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“We get in trouble and then we look at our underwear and it’s matching,” said senior girl of herself and another senior girl, who had already said that when they wear the same underwear, they both get in trouble. I have no idea what prompted them to announce this in class. 25 Jan.

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At 4 p.m. this day, so much gray: the roads are gray, the bridge over the river is gray, water’s gray, reflecting gray sky. The grassy ground is tan, but also muddy gray. 25 Jan.

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Reminding myself: Just don’t look at stuff that is iconic, or resonant — certain houses, say, that seem to inspire thoughts of “my life would be better if only I lived there.” Stay in your own life, keep your attention on your own life, instead of mentally living elsewhere, in idea-realm (fantasy-realm, “solve all my problems” land). Just drive to your destination, just keep looking ahead, not off to the sides of road at houses. 25 Jan.

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My students lack the experience (worldliness) of adults, but they’re also open-minded (not world-weary). 26 Jan.

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People don’t go to an anthology or magazine of poems to get meaning, but just poems. So a meaningful piece — something you as writer really mean — you might publish not with others’ work but with your own, where readers can see your project, your point of view, your take on poetry, your world of poems, so that your poem is not competing with other poets’ in a poetry mag. Of course, poetry-mag poems are gonna be real poety-poems: ur-poems, practically meta-poems, where poets show off their poetry-writing skills to other poets. [A thought after reading a recent issue of Poetry mag, 26 Jan.]

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Even when I don’t find a particular poem I love, I like how my mind seems to let loose and I have new ideas — unrelated to the poems, usually — but perhaps the poems loosen my mind to think anew. 26 Jan.

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A kind of magic: the transformation of spoken words to a transcribed quote, isolated on page or screen (how the quotes I hear come to exist as words on my notepage). 26 Jan.

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“She has more problems than I can count, and I failed Algebra 2, so it’s not that many,” said senior student of classmate. 26 Jan.

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“When am I gonna use that in my outside life, except when I become president?” rhetorically asked my student, referring to the school’s required speech class. 26 Jan.

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A cracked-open box of telephone wires, possibly, NE of Riverside-Perryville intersection, 28 Jan.

A cracked-open box of telephone wires, possibly. Northeast of Riverside-Perryville intersection, 28 Jan.

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My cat was not moving his sleepy head this morning — only his eyes moved. And a horse and donkey I drive past every day spend a lot of time in their small shed. Animals spend much more time than people do sitting around, just being conscious, not doing. Maybe I need to do more of that to feel like I’ve really lived and been aware of it. When I’m getting things done, I’m less aware of being alive. Maybe animals living this way have a sense of really having been alive enough when so they don’t fear death when they die — not that animals can abstract like we can, but they’re so much more accepting than I seem to be. 27 Jan.

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“Oh, buddy, it’s fantastic,” said student to me about Avanti restaurant‘s gondola sandwich. 27 Jan.

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Not from my notes, but worth repeating: My brother Nace, who lives in Northern Minnesota and photographs sled dog races, northern lights, and moose, was recently interviewed on Duluth public radio about his pictures.

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Wires up close.

Wires up close.

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“None of my business, but interesting questions”: Notes from my recent pocket pages

Posted on January 22, 2017 | 1 comment
My barbershop's waiting room. 3 Jan. 2017

My barbershop’s waiting room. 3 Jan. 2017

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Modeling the consciousness of other drivers: If a car is tailgating me, I think how its driver is probably frustrated with me, and I think of those drivers thinking of me as they tailgate, pass, and speed ahead. Once they’re gone, I can go back to just being my own mind, not imagining the social aspects. 3 Jan.

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How clean your hotel room is depends, really, on the lowest-paid worker at the hotel, the housekeeper. Does she/he care enough to do a good job? Why should she — only the fear of getting fired? 2 Jan.

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My commute home from work, Thursday 5 Jan. 2017

My commute home from work, Thursday 5 Jan. 2017

Reminding myself pick your battles: There’s no need to spend your time and energy mocking others’ views, messages, or mistakes. Let those go, and observe and think originally. Look past the signs (and the abstractions distracting me) to the things. 2-3 Jan.

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When I listen to the radio (usually NPR news) in the car, it makes me think of distant abstractions, classifications of the world. Without the radio on as I drive, I’m seeing the subtle story of what endures [by the way, the idea of enduring seems related to the idea of being; this etymology of was says the word comes from a root word meaning “to remain.”] I’m seeing not the ideas, the abstractions, the meanings, the intentions, but simply what things are there. The wood of a fence, whether the fence itself is in good or poor repair, whether its’ a working fence or not, whether it’s a fence at all anymore or not.

Looking at the things around me is a mental cleanser to abstract (such as religious) explanations/interpretations of reality, such as when I was told “water can read” and it responds to happy words placed in its proximity. 2-3 Jan.

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My commute home, Friday 6 Jan. Note the cloud forming from nuclear power plant at Byron, about 20 miles west of my location at the taking of this photo.

My commute home, Friday 6 Jan. Note the cloud forming from nuclear power plant at Byron, about 20 miles west of my location at the taking of this photo.

Byron nuclear power plant steam towers, from a couple miles north. 15 Jan.

Byron nuclear power plant steam towers, from a couple miles north. 15 Jan.

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By recording my memories, my moments, I create a life on the paper. But it’s still not my life. My memories still differ, and memories are fluid, flexible, and weird — a different kind of medium from writing on paper. My memories seem to form into narratives, stories that I get better at telling — I revise as I recall and tell them. 5 Jan.

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The living matters more than the lessons. I might as well write about day-to-day moments rather than boiling down my experiences to “moral of the story” lessons, the way some personal essays do. 5 Jan.

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“My mom’s having a kid today. That means I have to cook my own dinner,” say my senior student. His mom did buy him “Lunchables,” he said, but added, “she’s not getting out of cooking.” Also, he said, “I’m becoming the middle child.” That’s no good, said classmate, herself a middle child. 6 Jan.

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“Do you think I’m an as_hole just by looking at me?” asked senior boy of a girl in my study hall. A second girl told him, “You are.” “You’ve known me for three years,” he told the second girl. 6 Jan.

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Spooky pine plantation. 20 Jan.

Spooky pine plantation. 20 Jan.

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At the diner where my wife and I eat breakfast, our friend Dean told us how he colors in certain boxes on the newspaper’s crossword when the spaces are longer than the words he puts in there. “If they get to make rules, I get to make rules,” he said. 7 Jan.

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Impressionistic image of cow in a snow storm. 9 Jan.

Impressionistic image of bovine in a snow storm. 9 Jan.

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As we did a brainstorming activity in my creative writing class, a student asked if she could go to the bathroom. I said she could once she came up with one more possible use for her group’s object, a block of wood. “It’s your will to live. Now can I use the bathroom?” said student. 9 Jan.

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My commute home from work. Monday, 9 Jan. 2017.

My commute home from work. Monday, 9 Jan. 2017.

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I don’t like fiction because I don’t like things happening. Or, rather, things happening seem dull. My grandpa died not long ago. That itself is not worth reading. My reaction to it might be. 10 Jan.

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Ogle County snow pastoral. 9 Jan.

Ogle County snow pastoral. 9 Jan.

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It’s gotta be hard for artists, celebrities, etc., to maintain an image, a persona, for their audiences. You can’t be human — get a cold, have diarrhea. I’m reminded of the Monty Python audio joke about which Italian film director is making the pee sounds. 11 Jan.

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My journal texts are me and aren’t me. They contain my voice, my words, my descriptions of my experiences, but they are just words on a page, fixed, while I’m a fluid, changeable consciousness. I write down fixed things so that I can be open to change. 12 Jan.

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“…interesting questions. None of my business, but interesting questions,” said the voice of a colleague as she and a companion walked past my classroom after school. 12 Jan.

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After thinking of Mitch Hedberg’s line that every book is a children’s book, if that child can read, I thought how each time one reads a text, that’s a unique new experience. A kid may not catch all the ideas of a book the first time through it, and of course, an adult may not. And a second read of a book is a unique experience because you already have some ideas about it. 12 Jan.

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How weird that our brains (mine and my students’, at least) seem so fast at finding rhymes to given words. It suggests that we listen to sounds faster, or more automatically, than meanings? 12 Jan.

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Image of my commute home, Thursday 12 Jan.

Image from my commute home, Thursday 12 Jan.

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“A snail can’t climb over a ratio,” I said, in explaining why numbers and math ideas aren’t as real as physical things are. I was arguing against numbers being real. 13 Jan.

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“You speak good enough English. He’s just weird,” said my wife to our friend Yvonne, who said maybe her language skills weren’t good enough to understand a Facebook post my wife wrote about how I’d covered up the clocks in our kitchen with sticky notes to free myself from clock-time awareness. 14 Jan.

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Beached river ice. 15 Jan.

Beached river ice. 15 Jan.

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It’s kinda weird that all our bodies’ material needs (except air and sunlight) come through our mouths. If we were cars, we’d put gas and brakes and tires into one orifice and let the car sort itself out. Food contains both “building blocks” and energy materials — food must be more complex than just gas or steel components of cars. 17 Jan.

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View of my morning commute to work. Tues. 17 Jan.

View of my morning commute to work. Tues. 17 Jan.

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I’m about at the halfway point of my morning commute, and I’d like to finish this page of notes. I don’t know what ideas I’ll have in coming minutes! 18 Jan.

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My classroom clock was zooming ahead on Wednesday morning. My first-hour class, normally 50 minutes, took 5 and a half hours on the clock. My second-hour class took 3 hours, and the 3rd-hour class took just 50 minutes, but at the end of class, it read 7:10 instead of the expected 10:45. 18 Jan.

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I don’t want to charge people to read my ideas or hear my presentations. Why bring money into this? What does my thinking and talking have to do with money? I don’t think I’d be any better at thinking or any happier with my life if I restricted access to those who could pay me for my humble genius. 18 Oct.

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“When he’s done speakin’, I know what he’s said,” said John Mortenson, identified as a Trump supporter in this NPR story about the president’s speaking style. 19 Jan.

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View of my afternoon commute home from work. 20 Jan.

View of my afternoon commute home from work. 20 Jan.

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“I’m doing time with my students,” said our waitress, Qaytlan 1, as she talked about a lesson she’ll be student-teaching soon. Here statement also sounded like she thought of school as prison. 22 Jan.

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‘A mandatory thing that Jesus gave me’: The week in pocket pages

Posted on December 11, 2016 | Leave a comment
Condensation condescension. 6 Dec.

Condensation condescension. 6 Dec.

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“I’m speaking the truth and getting ready to die in about 35 minutes,” said a keynote speaker at an education conference I went to last Monday. The speaker framed his remarks by saying if he were to die at the end of his speech, he would want to tell us only his most important messages. It was a pretty intense rhetorical device. 5 Dec. 2016

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Condensation conversation. 6 Dec.

Condensation conversation. 6 Dec.

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“I kinda wanted a Jolly Rancher one of those days,” said my student of wishing the person subbing for me had instead been the sub next door, who typically brings candy for the students. 7 Dec.

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My cat shelved himself. 25 Nov. 2016

My cat shelved himself. 25 Nov. 2016

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Lots of businesses sell what people want, but teachers (and maybe doctors and others) tell people what they need (even if the clients don’t want it).  7 Dec.

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Outside the history museum in downtown Byron, Ill. 26 Nov.

Outside the history museum in downtown Byron, Ill. 26 Nov.

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Education policy focuses on generalized programs, though of course all learning is in particular minds, at particular times, and in particular situations. 7 Dec.

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“I really can hold a grudge,” said student, seemingly realizing this about himself as he was reading his journal from earlier in the semester. 7 Dec.

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My high school and its slowly colorizing pear trees, 30 Nov.

My high school and its slowly colorizing pear trees, 30 Nov.

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“This is a mandatory thing that Jesus gave me,” said my student as she made a point about why she shouldn’t have to pay for tampons since it’s not her fault she menstruates. 7 Dec.

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Soybean field, Bethel Road east of railroad crossing, 2 Dec.

Soybean field, Bethel Road east of railroad crossing, 2 Dec.

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“When my dog dies, I’m definitely gonna get him stuffed,” said my student (contra Alan Alda’s advice). Classmate said that if student got a compliment on her stuffed dogs, she could say, “Thanks. They used to be alive.” Student said she’d prefer to get her dog stuffed rather than bury it because “I’m not gonna bury him in the ground, where it’s dirty,” she said. “OK, and stuffing him isn’t gross?” asked second classmate, who added, “I don’t think you can stuff a dog that small.” Student’s dog is apparently a two-pound purse dog. 7 Dec.

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Out a Pheasant Run window, 6 Dec.

Out a Pheasant Run window, 6 Dec.

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“Gee, I wonder what the inside of a testicle looks like,” said student of a mink dissection she had performed (in anatomy class, I hope). The mink’s gland was “a solid ball, like a nut, like a cashew, that’s what it was,” she said. 7 Dec.

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Pheasant Run Resort Atrium, St. Charles, Ill. 5 Dec.

Pheasant Run Resort Atrium, St. Charles, Ill. 5 Dec.

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Student asked how students get quoted by me in my pocket pages. “Say something dumb,” said classmate. 8 Dec.

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After carnival workers were mentioned in class, a student announced that his friend had sex with a carny to get free rides. If that’s true, that’s maybe the saddest thing I’ve ever heard, I said.

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Snow on leaf and safety pegs. 10 Dec.

Snow on leaf and safety pegs. 10 Dec.

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“Go suffer cold in my car,” said student to his cousin in the parking lot after school. The cousin wanted the keys to start and warm up student’s car, but he wasn’t giving over the keys. 8 Dec.

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“Hell, yeah, I would — I gotta pay for college somehow,” said my senior student about whether she would sell a kidney. 9 Dec.

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Pheasant Run Resort Atrium, St. Charles, Ill. 6 Dec.

Pheasant Run Resort Atrium, St. Charles, Ill. 6 Dec.

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