It’s been a weird week.  I said it, I e-mailed it, I even tweeted it on Twitter.  (And I didn’t even include all the weirdness of the week because Twitter only allows 140 characters.) And this today:

Here is your horoscope for Sunday, May 4:

You are still finding more weirdness as you dig through your closets or open old files—but it’s almost all positive! You should try to exploit this crazy luck, because now is the time to pull ahead of the pack.

So, I guess the weirdness isn’t over yet… I can’t say all of the weirdness this week has been positive or lucky, but some of it has-- and I’ll happily take more of the same.  Even if it is, well, weird.  (Weird word, weird is.)

Speaking of the good kind of weird:  Yesterday, I got candy in the mail from Alison for telling her my favorite words.  Weird wasn’t one of them, but maybe it should be.  (If you’re curious, my favorite words include: undulate, sensuous, slippery, velvet, salacious, wicked, bohemian and hedonist.)

I’m off to make words.  Not with candy, however.  That would be… weird.

The problem I have with being a college adjunct is that students, at least many of the students I have encountered, do not love being students.  They do not want to be students, they want to be graduates (that’s the best case scenario-- I think some of them have no clue what they want).  They want to be finished with the process, but they do not want to endure the process.  They want to whine and complain and be spoon fed the answers.  They want to do half-assed work and get a B in the class-- or even an A!  It is exhausting, frustrating and depressing to grade these students’ assignments, struggling to find a way just to pass some of them, knowing that I’m not doing them any favors if I do pass them, but not wanting to fail them, either.  It has been a disheartening couple of days. 

I suppose the worst part of this experience for me is that I don’t understand.  I like school-- which is obvious, since I keep going back.  I love learning new things, I enjoy writing research papers and doing creative projects.  I think I’m enthusiastic in my teaching approach and I don’t understand why that enthusiasm doesn’t rub off.  Sure, I have a handful of students who are doing well, a couple who seem to be the kind of student I was/am, but they are the minority and they do not counterbalance the apathy of the others.

The semester is almost over and I will be relieved when it is.  I hate feeling this way-- I like being passionate about my work.  Sure, I’m relieved when I finish a writing project, but I’m almost always anxious to go onto the next thing.  With teaching, at least this semester, I’m not anxious for fall.  (I decided to take the summer off-- I wouldn’t be doing anyone any favors to teach a summer class with my current attitude.) I’m starting to think I’m not cut out to be a teacher-- or maybe I’m not cut out to teach what I’m teaching or where I’m teaching.  I don’t know.  But this feeling-- this blah, discouraged, helpless feeling-- is one I can live without.

I can only imagine how I will feel when I submit final grades next week.  Sigh.

This universe out of alignment theory suggests I am somehow responsible for realigning it.  Of course, I go from being rather humble in saying I don’t expect people to think about me (especially people who don’t see me often-- or at all) to accepting responsibility for righting the universe.  Ah, the dichotomy!  Perhaps it’s only my universe that is out of order, hence the need for me to be the one to re-establish the balance.  Yes, perhaps that is it.  But I have heard others say their universe is out of order, too.  (Hence, some of the correspondence.)

I have commented more than once in the past week that, whatever task I take on next, I would like to wear a cape.  (Alison prefers sexy socks.) I don’t know why, but righting the universe (even if it’s only my universe) just seems to scream “cape.” Plus, people kind of have to believe I’m serious about saving the universe if I’m wearing a cape, right?  (But not one of those floor-length ones I’ll trip over-- I prefer one of those mid-thigh capes that will flow behind me as I dash around.)

I’m cool with being the superhero of my own universe.  How about you? 

Are you on Twitter?

I met a cute boy named Donnie in the gravel parking lot of the Sportatorium after a Bryan Adams concert.  We were each with our own friends, parked next to each other and waiting for the over-crowded lot to clear out of rowdy (and drunk-- it was Florida in the 80s) teenagers.  We started talking… and ended up kissing while sitting on the hood of my brand new, midnight blue 1987 Camaro.  He wanted my phone number but I wouldn’t give it to him (he had “bad boy” written all over him and I was a good girl), so he wrote his number on the back of a picture of the Lauderdale-by-the Sea pier.  I worked in a photo lab at the time and was into photography and that was the only paper I had on me.  I kept that picture forever (I’m pretty certain I still have it somewhere), but I never called Donnie and I never saw him again. 

Memories don’t get any better than that, do they?  Sigh...

Alas, my day was sidetracked by some nasty weather (the tornado hit west of me, I’m fine), a sinus headache and other, more pressing work.

I’ll blog more about the good old days one day this week.

Life - thin as a thread
Sometimes you’re lucky
Sometimes you’re better off dead

Your first breath is taken and in to the world you are cast
You long for tomorrow while living each day as your last

Well I know what your heart desires
But you can’t take it with you
Into the fire

Now you’ve done all you can
Your life’s at the crossroads
You watch as it slips through your hands...

-- Bryan Adams, “Into the Fire”—1987

Accusations of racism are being directed at publisher Seal Press in connection with Amanda Marcotte’s It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments.  Rachel Kramer Bussel, responding to a comment left on Seal Press’s blog, shares her thoughts in White People and Racism. 

In response to the interview Literary Fiction Gets Kinky with Melanie Abrams (author of Playing), Alison Tyler adds to the ongoing debate of literary writing vs. erotica writing (not to mention the ridiculous notion that a writer of bondage fiction should “look” a certain way) in Defensive “Sex Writer” Responds.

I haven’t read either book (and likely won’t get a chance to read the first edition of Marcotte’s book with the controversial illustrations), but I think the discussions surrounding them are important to all writers.  It’s not just about the words on the page, it’s about how the writer’s (and publisher’s) intent will be measured and interpreted by the world at large.

Oh, how I wish I could go to Chile!  Maybe next year…

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

~Pablo Neruda

I think tonight I will curl up with Pablo Neruda’s poetry (and a glass of Chilean wine?) and dream of Chile…

I did finish my sex and religion story last night and sent that off (a day late-- oops).  I like it, hope the editor and publisher do, too.  I have several more stories to work on this week and next-- planes, trains, automobiles and corporal punishment.  Woooo!  I love my job.  Some other projects are in the works for May…

Before I can delve into all the sexy goodness, I must first finish my Mythology lecture for tomorrow.  It’s the last class before finals-- how did that happen?  I’m a little disappointed I won’t be teaching it again in the fall, but I now have a wealth of material should I teach it again down the road.  At the moment, I’m only slated to teach one class in the fall-- English Comp-- but I hope to add at least one more fun (to me) class to that.

Okay.  Time to focus.  Seriously.