huzzah!

good news: saw recently that the small human growing my coworker's tummy is doing splendidly. there were some funky ultrasound photos before so we were a little apprehensive, but now everything looks great!

this makes me feel like life is cool again, since my week has been kind of crazy and stressful and i seem to be having issues communicating clearly with others with the result that many people (aka, high school counselors, students, etc.) are getting frustrated. i don't know what it is--it's like the stars are aligned against proper communication. these are the times when my instincts tell me to go back to bed and not leave it until the winds change. but i must keep traveling.

at least i get to go home tomorrow *knocks on wood* for at least a week, and be in my own bed and drink from my own coffee cups. isn't it silly to miss your coffee cups? but i do.

through a glass darkly

oh dear i love my life. i am so foolish when i worry about things that are truly inconsequential, when there is so much happiness before me.

i met a homeless man tonight and gave him my leftover dinner, and then felt horrible because it was not even remotely charitable of me since i wouldn't have been able to finish it anyway, but he was so thankful for it. it made me ashamed of my own blindness.

it's so easy to live in a bubble and get caught up in your own cares, but you just don't realize how much you really have.

for now, we see through a glass darkly; but then, face to face...

traffic and poetry

such a day...it was cold (but warm, according to those who live here) and drizzling, and i saw five schools, had only a couple students come to my visits, but they were overall good visits, aside from the craziness of chicago construction and the weather. but i feel bad for construction workers, as they do very necessary work, without which we'd complain even more bitterly, and so it's quite unfair to get frustrated when there's traffic, when they're only maintaining safety.

i tried to imagine chicago as a sunny place, which is decidedly difficult to do in october, but i did my best. i am sure that, somewhere in the stretches of this mob city, there are lovely autumn days of golden sunlight and vivid splashes of color in the trees, with a rich blue sky overhead. i just haven't chanced on any yet.

the little cares that fretted me
i lost them yesterday
among the fields, above the sea,
among the winds at play,
among the lowing of the herds,
the rustling of the trees,
among the singing of the birds,
the humming of the bees.

the foolish fears of what might happen,
i cast them all away,
among the clover-scented grass,
among the new-mown hay,
among the husking of the corn,
where drowsy poppies nod,
where ill thoughts die and good are born--
out in the fields with God.

on a sadder note

i just found out that the mother of a good friend has extensive lung cancer, of the kind which we can't hope for much good. what do you say to that?

nothing, because every kind of consolation is impossible when you're twenty-three and you know that you're about to lose your mother.

another award-winning moment

i accidentally got into somebody else's car today, thinking that it was my own. to be fair, it was unlocked so it's not my fault if it looked similar to my rental.

that is all.

vision

today, during my rep visit to the whitfield school, i was struck by a beautiful painting done by a student.

i had come a little early so i had to wait in the front hallway for someone from the college center to come and greet me. as i waited, i noticed the piece hung on the right wall near the front entrance, so i wandered over to observe more closely. once i started to look, i couldn't seem to stop.

when you first perceive a piece of art, your initial reaction is never intellectual, it's emotional. or at least, it's my opinion that if the art truly came from the soul, then that's what you see when you regard it. but it is always so, i think.

this was the sort of painting that you fall into. the brushstrokes are wide and curving outward, the body of the painting a range of deep midnight blue to aquamarine, as if the whole canvas encompasses the world and all of existence-and so this one did, actually.

it was a painting of all the major world religions, in harmony with each other. unfolded upon this blue-mother-sea canvas were six petals, like the peals of an orange, with a depiction of a mosque or temple or church, each in its own holy shrine. the holy places were all connected by a thick stretch of blue beneath them, and by intricate lines that wound around the painting and in between. the tips of each petal blurred alternately from white into yellow, orange and brown, or from white into blue and black: the spectrum of day and night. the whole seemed to express the sacred unity of purpose underlying all faiths, but the experience of beholding it i really only describe feebly. next to the painting the student had written a description and interpretation of her belief that every faith is essentially the same. i couldn't believe that a high school student had done this.

i had to tear my eyes away from looking, because at some point i felt that even though i were legitimately supposed to be entertaining myself, i had somehow sunken into a reverie that would have made it extremely difficult to suddenly spring back into my extroverted side as soon as my guidance counselor walked around the corner.

but i thought about that painting all day today, and about the relative idealism of a teenager; would she practice that wide-spreading love that we feel so freely when we're younger, before we're tested by all of the hypocrisy and cynicism of the world? how will we practice the values that we claim to believe?

i saw eternity the other night

like a great ring of pure and endless light,

all calm, as it was bright,

and round beneath it, time is hours, days, years

driven by the spheres

like a vast shadow mov'd, in which the world

and all her train were hurl'd...

to be, or not to be...happy?

a great day at work, a terrible day for the economy. but i don't pretend to understand half of what is wrong with wall street, aside from the obvious fact that it is failing. why that is, however, and what this bail-out bill actually proposed, or still less why it was voted against if it was meant to save the economy, no one can seem to tell me.

so i'm rather terrified with not knowing what is happening, which directly competes with the otherwise good day that i had. considering that it's monday and our office is so lonely without everyone there, i had a pretty nice transition back. my colleague, leigh anne, went for her ultrasound today, too, so i look forward to seeing the photos of twenty-week old baby.

so if i ignored the world, i would be singularly happy. but it's foolish to bury your head in the sand. even south park knows that.