12:09PM WED JUN 25 2025
meow
12:03AM MON JUN 2 2025
goose flesh from the cold air through my new window. summer night feeling like it did at camp a hundred years ago. anticipating course starting tomorrow. waking up in less than 7 hours. does anyone care if i come in late? i know i should show up on time but what about for joy?
Joyyyy? joy? like how glen campbell sings it...
i'm refreshed and ready to be refreshed again by this... i'm bracing for the freshness of this new thing tomorrow. i'm thinking also of getting roller skates and figuring out how to move and balance my body and enjoy my physicality. i never had a problem moving in the most important contexts but you know sometimes you'd just like to move a little more easily.
4:19PM THURS MAY 22 2025
Last day of school/work/school-work. Just said goodbye to 20 sweet kids. I'd been kind of feeling the guilt for months but I really need to go because I'm not doing well here. My mom suggested on the phone the midwest is like my "vale of tears." I think that's biblical ??
Anyway anyway. A long time coming. Have to pack everything up. Have to say goodbye to some more people too. Still the feeling overpowering all the other ones is tiredness.. I didn't take a break today because I knew I wanted to see these faces for a little longer :(
K
who has a heightened sensory thing and can get set off into tantrums by like little things related or unrelated to that was very sedate today and I saw her sweet side again. She did this thing all year... everybody would be in the middle of a group lesson (or some other time when she was definitely supposed to be paying attention) and she would peel off from the group and kind of slink over to me and I would be like K what's up. And she would just look at me, open her mouth, stick her finger in there, and start wiggling a tooth wordlessly. It must have happened 20 times and when there was time I'd entertain it, peer in there, say "ahhh, I see," and then tell her it didn't look like it was quite ready yet. We'd gone maybe three weeks without that happening since she lost that tooth that had been bugging her. But sure as rain on the last day she came up to wiggle a totally different tooth. It was perfect. It was a Simpsons bit. They totally kill me.
11:48PM TUE MAY 6 2025
this is my first entry on this new page. itâs going to be a place to put things down.
whatâs that quote about âwhy are you holding onto all of this? â well, where can i put it down?â and i want to connect that to this other thing too⌠my friend cooper told me in this awesome frenzy a few years ago about this thing iâd never heard of called a phylactery, which is this little box of small things kept in a church. here:
A reliquary (also referred to as a shrine, by the French term châsse, and historically also referred to as a phylactery[1]) is a container for relics.
Relics may be the purported or actual physical remains of saints, and may comprise bones, pieces of clothing, or some object associated with saints or with other religious figures.
itâs a small place to put special things down in. but what my friend said that blew my mind was about⌠and here we go⌠the idea that for christians jesus is something like a phylactery. you might need a figure, an embodiment, someone at whose feet to put your things down. thatâs part of the reason iâm keeping this. iâve known that need to put it all down so much that you need a figure. iâm going to try putting my thoughts up on the cloud online because itâs not so easy for me to leave it all at jesusâs feet right now because i have my hangups, one superficial one being that the local church is kind of full of blonde people and i feel like they see me and want me to scuttle away like a roach. i was thinking today that maybe they can tell i really liked reading marx. thatâs a scary one for some people. itâs probably not that but can you tell what kind of flavor i must be giving off??? iâm not dirty⌠i donât know what it is. iâve been trying to figure it out forever. i have a lot of great friends and iâm probably making it all up anyway.
but so the point is that this is here for me. you can float right over this page or you can leave something in the guestbook.
cheers!
8:18PM FRI MAR 21 2025
Beautiful little cottage. At the end of yard you were there the butterflyies swarmed and spun they were pink and they looked like birds and lauers of white undwewear and sweetness in the air and tall garden and skimming over treetops in âmidnight hellâ with the family. A girl and three boys, at the beginning, with their parents. Things are all right. Great family, though the younfest boy is punkish and carries something like a pocketknife and flies around with it, but life is full. They are like fairies of some kind.
Then something happens â girl drowns, father is in anguish, rhere is a painting of father in anguish, just his horrified face, and he goes with her ? related to the classics. You were there though. You were so beautiful, you belonged in that place. It was very sexy. It was white clothes over white underwear, it was a glittering pool in the yard. We were visitors to this fairy hostel, fairy inn run by the family, but we didnt come there together. B
8:11PM FRI MAR 21 2025
dad said to me a child makes a parent and you make me a better person and god bless you. he was so jazzed about me doing this thing where iâm going in to give this demo lesson that he went to the bathroom over-caffeinated at work and got on the notes app and wrote all this, basically wrote out the monologue to a lesson. it wa insane the way he talked on the phone, the fervor. i miss him so much. i canât believe it. i canât believe what i heard!
my dad loves me. i am not homeless. i am not backwards. iâm gonna try some stuff. iâm gonna do this and then iââm gonna do other things. nothing will end my life in some kind of abject failure and
i know what he means because of my kids now. i see how they could make a person better. disappointed in so many teachers but i know itâs possible because of my dad. i need to become helpful and better
10:33PM MON MAR 17 2025
guilty dreams about running off on fun vacations and leaving my two smart kids chained to a post and not thinking about it. the kids see right through you. we were on a cruise ship. was there. i was so relieved
11:59AM SAT FEB 8 2025
dreamt about starting a thing with another guy layered on top of a thing with another guy. guilty conscience? he was cute and i felt free. we got in a tightly packed bus together and held hands the whole way to our seat near the back of the bus and holding his hand didnât feel gross at all. he led me there. it was exciting, the idea of being cramped in with him. he was okay looking and had sparkly eyes. he was doing this weird thing though. he had this weird trick where he was able to stamp a small letter or number on the inner lid of his eye by touching his eye all over and picking up a letter from a piece of paper and moving it back to his eye with his finger. this was useful for some reason but iâm not sure what.
was 7 years old and suicidal and it ran in her family and it ran in the streets of new york. i was trying to prevent something terrible from happening. in her storyline, we only caught glimpses of her from outside. it was not usually her pov, we didnât get inside her head. but we saw a lot of ruin and destruction and heard grandma was crazy and going to kill herself and wandered the streets and crossed four lane roads with fences like the one in annapolis on the way to graulâs.
i also saw a group of tiny children out on the wide street looking up at a low sign for the bus route and i think it made me cry in my dream.
our classroom was high up in this low roofed complex. it was dimly lit and brown except white came through the windows that day. we were high up on maybe the third or fourth floor. big windows stretched across one wall. strips of rug left above and below the whiteboards for timeline projects. was miserable and i was also worried about her. things were at a crisis point. i asked her if she wanted a hug and she hugged me, i said i love you, she said i love you, i asked her what was wrong. i got the sense that just that communion had done the saving and avoided the terrible thing that was going to happen.
12:36PM THURS NOV 28 2024
let it go it's been years
it actually has been years. can you believe that? at this point, yeah. time for what? time for what? can we turn to something new, or at least different?
thanks, writer of discourses on love, name of whom i forgot. itâs real, or something is, whatâs happening is real, it is real in my head. thanks for reminding me itâs real. but now what? what else is real?
thatâs the next question! what else is real? what else can i turn my attention to?
does it matter if other people think itâs lame? does it matter? does it matter if some sister who doesnât understand other things, doesnât understand this? no, probably not. no, it doesnât.
these are things that can happen:
â i can make a playlist for my brother and a list of movies for him. i can get him a pair of sweatpants like he wants and get him some nice adult clothes. ralph lauren. no joke!
â i can do my coursework. i can finish strong. i can get good grades. that could set me up for whatever the fuck happens next academically. maybe there will be something. maybe dad is not kidding around.
â i can do the biggest challenge right now, or one of the two big ones, the other one being how to think about âs situation and help him. this one here is the school and the kids and the environment. this is changing the course of a big ocean liner and the minds of 23 people. this is helping whatâs her name, . this one actually matters.
â i can befriend that friend of friends. hey, on thatâ
â i can love the people i know now. i can love them. itâs really hard!!!! fuck!!!! i have a knot in my chest just thinking about opening my heart. maybe itâs always like that? maybe i only notice when i think using my chest. the awareness goes there, and i notice itâs all tight?
â i can love . i can treat her well. i can be honest. i can offer her support. i can be constant and kind. she is not quite alone, but she might feel very alone. she is hurting too.
â i can love , who is so funny. i can see if he or those two want to do some improv class with me.
â i can try and love and understand these friends of theirs and appreciate them for who they are. everybody wants to be appreciated for what they already are. everybodyâs trying. with her sports thing, her abysmal social situation and the taylor swift thing, i wonder where sheâs going. but sheâs all right! i like hanging out with her. she reminds me of aunt a little bit. i liked it when she took her car and was backing in and out. sheâs daring. she has fire! that impressed me! with her boyfriends and her taylor swift and tiktok. i understand her less somehow. or what is it that bugs me? is it that sheâs blonde and has something i want? damn. well, i have to look past that and see her. she is really funny and i want her to succeed. she is so damn smart. you can feel it around her.
no kidding about this holiday, itâs doing its job. i donât know whether iâd be thankful today if the power of suggestion werenât all around me. pretty cool.
i want boston, thatâs it. and you know something, itâs because of the water. it clicked when theodora and i were talking about it. i donât want to be trapped between a hard place and new jersey. i donât want the schuylkill, donât know how to spell it. i want real water. i anticipate that i would feel trapped. but⌠i also anticipate that boston could feel like a precipice near the ocean. maybe iâm just unhappy!
i want to avoid that big gurgling mess. i want to avoid that thing. i want to avoid the knot that combines my mom with [this other mess]. how did that happen?!
1:19PM MON NOV 11 2024
âWhen you punish a person for dreaming his dream, donât expect him to thank or forgive you.â
Thatâs why I thought of this song. Iâm trying to do this project and thinking of the way we handle the classroom, thinking of and the motor he runs on, how weâre always telling him what to do, how embarrassed I feel to be doing that, how I remember, how he must think we donât understand. Do we? I donât know. I think the guilt is here because I do know and yet, and yet.
This whole thing is about not interfering with a personâs own path. Itâs supposed to be about respect for what a person is. The kernel in that person is a hope for the future. He obviously is not having an easy time in life. His mom is [busy] or whatever it is and he obviously eats badly and shows up late. Itâs not his fault. If he had a dad and if his mom were rich things would be different. But because we placed all this value on sports⌠Now that is what we have to work with. How can I crush his dream? Can I? What are we doing? What is doing? Sheâs trying to protect him by telling him the truth, but itâs in a leering, scary way. Good, maybe. Effective. I donât know. But I donât know how to help this child, so when Iâm making posters, I feel like a liar.
His hope for the future will overtake him like a parasite and suffocate his real life to death if she doesnât strangle it first. That may be true. The Montessorians talk about this sometimes⌠Creating choices to guide a person towards the habits of making their own⌠But man. I feel bad. But these kids need help. We need to focus on and this new girl, whatâs her name, , my God⌠Need lots of help.
This is what I can do: read a lot, get acquainted with the world, and come to truly believe in him. I need to trust this kid. That is all I can do!
2:25PM FRI OCT 25 2024
I dont understand rules still. When i was a kid i saw adults go around, i knew there were rules for me, places i couldnt go, i imagined a time when i was free to do anything and roam, and there was no limit on me. But now i impose my own limits on myself. The roof is gone so i have my hands over my headâŚ! But who would want to go to the bar now that itâs allowed?
Where i really want to go is the pumpkin patch, but not during hours. With friends, at night, when itâs not allowed. I want libertyâŚ
11:24PM TUES OCT 15 2024
âWork this heavy heart and make it light again!â With what tool? Honesty!!!
11:39PM SAT OCT 12 2024
This is McDowell Hall. Built in 1789, it predates the metric system, the smallpox vaccine, and the slinky. What a time!
This is the Ptolemy Stone. On Wednesday nights, college students gather around it to sing sea shanties until midnight, and spill beer on each other and the ground. The libations to the earth evoke the rituals of classical Greece, and work well for generating Mana. This ancient tradition began in 1990.
Most St. Johnâs students want to be lawyers or homesteading farmers. Other students clamor for the title of Wisest Wizard.
12:45PM SAT AUG 31 2024
It is not abnormal to have a subconscious mind
Billions of people
