Outside

Upon waking,
my brain retreats. 
I want
I want
to avoid the inevitable hopelessness
unenviable dread
that seeps through each beginning of each beginning of each day.
I try to lever myself
I try to pry myself
into the day,
but mostly I 
Resist
the pull of normalcy in favor of  my comfortable black murk.
On some days,
the sun reaches in and grabs me by the neck.
It's a best friend who refuses 
to watch me wallow when there is 
Outside waiting.
My legs are weighted by two-ton memories and
slowed
by thick magnetic mud.
I slog with the sun pulling my neck my arm my heart toward Outside.
If I can navigate this holy map,
make it to my front door, 
dragged along, then
a surfeit of,
glimmers of
a path appear
and grow exponentially into a widening view
of 
this bird
this tree
this weed
this flower
this shadow.
This air
replaces the grey fizz fuzz buzz in my head.
And makes me feel.
Alive.
Outside.
The doorway is my magical portal
but it has a combination lock.
I fumble.

#AccidentalPumpkin's Rules for Public Spaces

I checked my Homeowner's Association regulation handbook. Nowhere does it have a rule against having a gigantic accidental pumpkin growing in your front yard.

It's not a "public space," but it is governed by public rules.

I have gotten reprimand letters in the past for having a 2X4 leaning on my back fence and for having a broken fence after a storm.  (And when I was really sick, for having grass that made the house look like a crack house needed cutting.)

My neighborhood is unabashedly lower-middle class/middle class.  I chose it for four reasons:

---It was in my daughter's school district

---It was affordable

---It is racially diverse

---I am unabashedly lower-middle class/middle class. These are my peeps. I am their peep. 

I love it here.

The pumpkins I actually planted on my back deck have already died due to fungus.  

The #accidentalpumpkin lives on.

I think she is the weebaby progeny of my Halloween pumpkin last year.  

The townhouse right next door is abandoned.  The front yard has been overtaken by a mass of uber-prickly weeds that are far taller than me.

I could cut them down, although the barbs go right through my gloves.

But I choose not to, because the animals like the cover the weeds provide.  The birds and rabbits and squirrels, and who knows what else - they don't think they are weeds; they think they are a playground.  

I am sure the owner has received numerous reprimand letters.  It has made no difference.

Is this a public space?  Last year my Crazy OCD intense neighbor from a few doors down sprayed the weeds with some awful shit toxic chemicals.  I was so pissed off incensed.  The weeds are not even close to her freakin house.  And I don't use that crap toxic chemicals near my half run-down shack abode.  "She just couldn't stand to look at them anymore." Ironically, the weeds came back even stronger after she sprayed.  So we got have to weeds AND chemicals. #thankyou #karma

This accidental pumpkin has grabbed on for dear life to everything it can entwine. 

My yard is the size of a postage stamp.  The accidental pumpkin covers a significant portion.

When I mowed the lawn today, I planned to pick the vine up and trim under it so I didn't get another  letter from the HOA.  But it has grabbed onto the grass all along its length.  So I carefully trimmed around it.

I love this pumpkin.

I thought, "Perhaps I should put a little protective fence around it." 

The kids in my neighborhood like to roll down my hill while shooting Nerf darts at each other.  So maybe they would be more careful if there was a fence or screen.

Then I remembered.  These are kids.  If there is a fence, they will go through it.  If there is a vine, they will ignore it.

And so it has stayed. No fence.

I have never grown a pumpkin before.

I love this pumpkin.  And I am pretty sure it will actually be lots of #accidentalpumpkins.  If not, I have enjoyed watching it invade.

#AccidentalPumpkin's Rules for Public Spaces:

~If there is an exclusionary rule about the public space you want to thrive in, break it.

~Hang on for dear life. 

~Don't build a fence - they would notice.

~Plant seeds even when you don't know you are planting them.

~Exist happily next to the weeds.  They will distract people from worrying about you.

~Get lots of sunshine.

Chocolate Lava Cakes: A Guide to Rhizo

What is Rhizo: A Culinary & Oceanographic Metaphor

Rhizomatic Learning is a grass-covered archipelago, each isle  an atoll dotted with a series of chocolate lava cakes and connected by ocean waves.

Each cake emits a unique signal, and is able to sense and synthesize unique signals from other cakes when conditions are right.

Each time a chocolate lava cake receives a signal, it gains an ounce+ of molten chocolate, as well as an enhanced signal of its own via the addition of more coral and more life in, under and around.

See below: Cakes on Atolls

Each atoll, with a base of coral, is weak when it first begins to emerge. But as more chocolate is added, the atoll becomes stronger and deeper.
Under and around it, beauty lives and swims, and tendrils die when tossed aside or neglected.

Southern Atolls, Maldives - Underwater World Part 2 from Eunjae Im on Vimeo.

Some atolls become too deep when overwrought, like this D&G atoll, spotted in the South Pacific:

[Such atolls are noted for losing signals and a subsequent decrease in chocolate content.] #data

Other atolls share so many unique signals that they become greater than the sum of their parts. One example is this Tahitian Rhizo Archipelago:

Note the chocolate overflowing on each side.

A few rhizo atolls are more idiosyncratic, like this atoll dubbed the "Simon"atoll:

Finally, as seen in the example below, when rhizo signals are neither sent nor received, the atoll disappears and is no longer a vessel of delicious chocolate.
 

Each cake is delicious on its own. But an archipelago of interconnected, cross-communicating chocolate lava cakes becomes an idiosyncratically beauteous entity, with incredible life hidden within and below the surface.

With just a few well-aimed signals, you end up with, at the very least, a small bit of tasty rhizo chocolate lava, some clear ocean waves, and a living microcosm. 

#ShareYourChocolate

Remix - add ice cream, illegibility, whipped cream raspberries, octopi, irony, sarcasm, curiosity, doubt, optimism, eels, a rudder.

Quicksand, Ellipses

trailing off,

my thoughts have been...

trailing off,

my posts have been...

trailing off,

my certainty has been...

Hesitation

has become both a strength

and a weakness.

Patience

has become both an asset and a

manipulation.

Thinking in ellipses 

is perhaps a product of age, or decline, or 

maybe an egress...

Where am I going?

To avoid clichés at any cost,

we put together words like 

neuronal emersion

or violet tenderness.

I connect

with people, pencils, comrades, airwaves, bluegrass, trees, crows, breezes.

Balance remains out of reach.

The swamp calls...

No, the swamp grabs. Pulls me under.

It smells of primordial ooze, diamonds, sweat, acorns, twisted steel.

It is quicksand.

Quick. Sand.

I float above myself and see my hand reach up from the mud.

In cartoons when I was a kid, they said if you fall in quicksand, don't panic.

Float. On your back.

No one talks any more about quicksand.

It used to be one of my fears.

Nuclear bombs and quicksand.

I roll onto my back

and float,

breathing in the scent of contrails.

And wait...

Time, Patience, Coconuts, Pileated Woodpeckers, Doodles

Time.

Photo by Jessi Watson, Thai Coconut Timepiece

As in,

...it's been a long.

That's all relative, of course.

The beginning of my hike

I have managed to maintain some online connections, and managed to attend OpenEd14 (which was fantastic and after which I got lost in VA someplace as my phone died and darkness fell and the Famous Virginia Traffic Overtook).  

My work at school has been rewarding. The pain levels in my body have not. They seem to cycle, and for the past few weeks the cycle has been Not So Good. As in, Bad. 

But.

Through these weeks, I have truly thought of my #ccourses folks daily.

I have been yearning to connect with them, but only managing the Life Minimum to succeed in "real" life, AKA my job....which basically means I have devoted what ever energy I have to my school and staff and students.

So. Connections.  

But.

We have now had ten days off from work, which has helped my pain. Less typing. Fewer desk-sitting hours.

I have been trying to Capture Moments in order to Maintain Sanity. Take advantage of the times when less pain has reared its head.

Listening to pileated woodpecker.

Books, they help a lot.  And nature.  I was able to take a gorgeous hike in Patapsco State Park and watch a pileated woodpecker for a wonderfully long time. 

Sky at Patapsco State Park

One of my students, who is homeless, has been at the Barnes and Noble store in town daily for about 8 hours a day, because his mom got a job in the mall. He and his sister can't stay at the shelter during the day, so they wait at the book store. I have been showing up there with my chess board and challenging him to a few games as we both learn to play chess.  

A colleague and I have been playing Chess With Friends across space and time. I'm awful, but willing and learning!  (You wanna?)

Another student has mainstreamed back to his home school, but I maintain contact with his mom.  He and I went on New Year's Eve to see the new Hunger Games movie. Popcorn ensued, and discussions of The Walking Dead, and mostly I was just happy to see him.  He has grown 6 inches since I last saw him.

My BFF and I have seen some amazing films as well - Imitation Game, Theory of Everything, Fury, Unbroken, Wild.

And.

PopArt filter on Zendoodle of owl

I am learning a new meditation-doodling method called Zentangle, which I am really enjoying. Hoping to incorporate it into our SEL program at school.

Embossed Filter on Bird Zendoodle

Most days for me consist of a choice between accomplishing a lot (more pain) and accomplishing a little (less pain). 

Today was a good day.

And...tomorrow will be another good one.

I need a cMOOC.

Swamp-bound, Dinner Is Burning, In Absentia, Adding and Subtracting, Meaning More, Meaningless

100% Swamp-bound.

Zero blog posts.

109 hours.

Never been good at math.

[Trigonometry was fine.  Higher than that, my brain did not compute.]

Lots of math this week.  Actually got a compliment from a colleague - "nice job with this complex math problem."

I have what's called an 11-month position. For two extra pay checks, we need to work 128 extra hours beyond the school day, between July 1, 2014 and July 1, 2015.  

So far I have worked 109.  I have until July to work 19 more hours.  Math.  You do the.

Spent three hours Wednesday night making a plan for distribution and transportation of 22 new Chromebooks throughout the middle school.

Lotsa compliments on said plan.  "Good math."

But. Plan now revised; some initial requisites became moot. [Teachers who had demanded Chromebooks no longer needed them once it took a tiny bit of coordination and cooperation to get them.]

Mine, all mine.

Don't wanna share.

"It's not about you.  What do the kids need?"

Too. Much. Work.

In the background, my Connected Courses friends got to play.  9 p.m. Three hours into the Chromebooks plan, I was irritable. I wanted to play, too.  But. Sleep.   @ 9 p.m. EST. 

Choices.

I have not gotten to read blogs this week. Only tiny dips into Twitter.  I know beautiful things have been happening.  I can't wait to rejoin.

Right now, my dinner is burning in the stove.  I smell the delicious burntness as I write.  So it burns.  I need to write. I like crispy veggies.  It all works out.

Brief respites with a student, writing to Maha Bali, have kept me encouraged, connected. He is excited to have a long-distance friend in Egypt.  He has few real friends here. Thank you, Maha.

Meaning more.

Not meaningless.

Lessons Learned.  
You can miss people you've never met.  You can wonder what they'd think about something that is happening in front of you.  

People. In France. Kentucky. Egypt. Massachusets. Ohio. New York.

Dinner.  Delicious.  Crunchy.

Out of the swamp. For now.

Why to the Fourth Power

 I teach because kids hate tests. And so do I.

actual test paper

I teach because a student asked me yesterday if I could eat 196 grapes in three minutes.

http://vimeo.com/21618611

I teach to reach.

I teach to learn.

I teach because crayfish.

I teach because new territory. 

I teach because horizons.

I teach because provocation.

I teach because mindstorms.

I teach because bridges.

I teach because my students believed me when I told them there was a mice bucket challenge.

I teach because trees, because my child, because treehouses.

Me as a literal tree hugger

I teach because curiosity.

I teach because laughter and pigs.

Deckadence

I sit decadently on my deck each night and eat the newest freshest peas right off the vine. To heck with acid rain, 
this is my version of organic. 
Nothing has ever tasted better. I made this food.
I chase it with a beer.

I grow things now.  I never used to.  I can't get past the addictive nature of creating something from a seed, food I can actually eat.  In my kitchen are jars of seeds, sprouts in pans, little tiny tendrils of nutrition.  I fend off the apocalypse for one more day.  Surely with these seeds, I can survive a while longer.  They are my mid-life babies, my menopausal offspring. They surround me with green when the world feels bloody gray and hopeless.

My deck is my sanctuary, my neighborhood not the best, the boards under my feet warped and worn, my grass not always trimmed the way the HOA would like, this is middle class, make no bones about it.  The cops who visit the courts don't see the irony of all of the "being in court" but they come here often anyway.  They are our entertainment through the windows as the crazy neighbor screams illogical nonsense at her boyfriend and child.  I am grateful for police diligence but allow myself to watch the craziness, that was me once, long ago, so I see both sides. 

I sit and listen, I feed my birds, I thrill in the bright yellow finches, the mischievous chickadees, the tiny chipping sparrows with itty bitty rooster combs that pop up at odd times.  
Right now it's fledgeling time; adolescent birds holler and beg their way through the day while patient parents feed them the seeds they could easily get for themselves. I like these mom and dad birds, the way they shield their children from the eventual reality for as long as possible.  


A robin has laid two clutches in my shed this summer, on top of a humane trap I used for catching baby stray cats. I love this irony as well, she chose the perfect spot, no predator can reach her chicklets.  She lets me see them, I anthropomorphize enough to think she trusts me. 

Here's my morning - feed the cats, make tea, grab a book, go check on the garden.  Examine each leaf while wearing reading glasses.  Add food to bird feeder. Sit on deck and read for as long as possible before life calls.

I have no hot tub, no expensive trips, but I can see the mountains from my deck, and things are growing.  Everywhere I look, I see green.  My neighbor cut my grass the other day.  My other neighbor offered me steamed crabs over the fence.  My neighbors are all colors, shapes and sizes. Make no bones about it, this is middle class.  Life is good. I choose this.