On the Grass

I'm teaching right now. Sort of. I'm sitting on the grass with my students and they have their laptops open, writing. The sun's setting, light coming through the trees and bouncing off a big map of the school, so that every time I look up it blinds me. The students are lovely here, bent over their keyboards, young brows furrowed. Can I say their young brows are furrowed? They are.

It's not quite as romantic as it sounds. I mean, it's lovely out here, and the sun is well-deserved after an astonishingly gloomy summer. But I think I'm moving back into my depression, old friend. It's arrived fiercely in the last few days, leveled me. It feels shameful. I'm working on kicking it out the door, but who knows how long that could take.

The students and I have had a semi-painful discussion about poetry, in which I had to explain why it's not true that "there's no wrong answer." If you can't support it with the text, folks, it doesn't really exist. I wish that were true: that there are no wrong answers. I wish I could tell them that and smile and nod when they say something absurd. But there are so many wrong answers it makes me ache.

In non-achey news, we found a place to live. In Waltham. Which means we have to leave our ward, but we'll have more money, and we'll be close to the hip/happening Moody street. We'll see if we're hip and happening.

Must go. The chickens are restless. Time to teach again.

Comments

Amara said…
You guys are SOOO hip and happenin'. So much so that me and my minivan feel distinctly frumpy around you. Just saw something on a blog --do you know anything about nutritional typing? Do you believe in it? I oughtta ask mom.
Sam Ruddick said…
dark and lonely, on a summer night.

kill my landlord. kill my landlord.

watch dog barkin', do he bite?

kill my landlord. kill my landlord.

slip in the window, break his neck.
then his house, i start to wreck.
got no reason: what the heck?

kill my landlord. kill my landlord.

C-I-L-L
my landlord.

-tyrone powers
Deja said…
When asked about Sam's comment, he said, "Well, your post was about poetry and apartments, right? So what could be more appropriate?"

Sigh.
belann said…
I thought Sam's poetry was related to depression--or his feelings for your landlord. Here's praying for better times.
Terry Earley said…
Good sign that depression is taking a beating from you when you are blogging. Getting an appropriate poem from Sam also helps!
See Mack Snow said…
Oh, I totally get the "there are indeed wrong answers." My students tried that quite often....I would also adamantly assert that there IS such a thing as a stupid question. For example, "do leprechauns celebrate St. Patrick's Day," and the classic, "Oh. TV didn't always have HD???" No, no it didn't...

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