Life at an Intersection

Chicago Phoenix, indemnity bonds, journaling, really really really want a zigazig ah, travel, books, travel books, relationships, values. It is hard to pinpoint precisely, but I'd say about 82% of what you read here is true. The rest is fictional nonfiction.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Sentimentality

Photobucket

This is a photo by Eric Ogden. It is beautiful. I don't own it. He does. Please don't sue me.

Shortly after moving to Arizona I found myself struggling to eat breakfast. I don't know if it was the time shift, the climate, nerves, or what, but I just had no appetite in the morning, couldn't choke anything down. A few half-eaten bowls of Frosted Mini Wheats later, I gave in to my body. Some days I'll eat a granola bar or a single donut (!!) or a very small bowl of cereal, but sometimes it is just a glass of orange juice.

Yesterday I bought two enormous boxes of cereal at Safeway: one box of Lucky Charms and one of Cap'n Crunch. My thought is that maybe I can trick my body into responding to these sentimental cereals of childhood. Our lunch break at school is less than 30 minutes, and I get so hungry by the end of the day that I overeat for dinner and am getting skinny-fat. Skinny-fat is, like, the worst. Well, maybe not worse than morbidly obese, but certainly worse than plain old skinny or plain old fat.

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Have I said this before? I can't remember. American flags look so beautiful, so majestic here in the desert. I dare say that nowhere in the United States does our flag look so magnificent flying overhead. I live not far from a bunch of car dealerships - patriotic lot that is - so I get to see these enormous flags flying and flowing and stirring the heart in the warm desert winds a couple of times a week. It gets me every time.

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School is going well. I am in an eighth grade math classroom at a nice suburban (but still Title I) school three days a week. So far the pattern has been that I observe and assist two days and teach one of those days every week. The kids are a pretty good lot, but they are a little older and more attitudinal than my preferred student age. Then on Tuesdays and Fridays I have grad school classes all day. I really adore my classmates, and we have a great time learning and sharing life together.

Also I am working on a case study of an English Language Learner (ELL) student for one of our grad school classes, so I have a little 5th grade buddy that we'll call Rob. His mom doesn't speak any English; therefore his family speaks only Spanish at home for her sake and Rob is reading proficiently on a 2nd grade level. But he loves dinosaurs and Goosebumps books and video games and we are going to become great friends. I'm not his teacher, so we can be friends, you know.

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I think it is fair to say that this is the least tan I have been in a solid decade. Bleh.

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I'm really excited for the fall concert season here in Phoenix. I've got tickets to see Sufjan Stevens in October, The Weepies in November, and really want to get tickets to see Jack Johnson in October too.

I remember the first time I went to Vancouver, back in October of 2002, I went to an in-store mini-concert and album signing with Jack Johnson at that Virgin Megastore on the corner of Robson and Burrard. We lined up outside for an hour beforehand and then filed calmly and orderly into the store at the appointed time. We sat criss-cross applesauce on the floor at the feet of our surfer/rocker/bard while he played "Bubbly Toes" on his acoustic guitar and sang. It was his first album, and he'd only had like two songs on the radio, but I knew that I really liked his vibe. That's a nice memory.

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The other day I had this moment where my thoughts flashed to the Logan Square Blue Line train stop, this ridiculously, unnecessarily long, mysteriously puddled but well-lit underground transit stop back in Chicago. It made me miss my former life, but only for a moment. Because then I realized that the only time I was ever at the Logan Square Blue Line train stop was when I was going to O'Hare airport to take a trip somewhere. So basically I was missing leaving Chicago. Which is a pretty strange thing to feel sentimental about.


Currently Listening to:
A Sun Came by Sufjan Stevens
I'm basically obsessed with him at the moment.

2 comments:

annesue September 5, 2010 at 2:11 PM  

My first memory of Sufjan is from a small punk festival in Norway, it´s 2001 and I didn´t know of Sufjan then. I came for soul junk, my fav. music at the time. Sufjan was suppose to play a show in the middle of the night, they cancelled it because most people were asleep. Soul Junk let him take the last 5 min of his show the next day and he played a sun came on his banjo... It was love a first song, I went to get a sun came straight away when he finished. I remember having a short conversation with him about whether to get a sun came or the album called something like a rabbit compilation. That is a nice memory too and what a great photo Eric took and I wish I was going to a Sufjan concert this fall.

Liza September 16, 2010 at 12:43 AM  

I want to go to those concerts with you.

Twitter / Davie_St

Words That I'm Living By - 5/2/2010

Time, as I've known it
Doesn't take much time to pass by me
Minutes into days, turn into months
Turn into years, they hurry by me
But still I love to see the sun go down
And the world go around

Dreams full of promises
Hopes for the future, I've had many
Dreams I can't remember now
Hopes that I've forgotten,
faded memories
But still I love to see the sun go down
And the world go around

And I love to see the morning
as it steals across the sky
I love to remember and
I love to wonder why
And I hope that I'm around
so I can be there when I die
When I'm gone

I hope that you will think of me
In moments when you're happy and you're smiling
That the thought will comfort you
On cold and cloudy days
if you are crying
And that you'll love to see
the sun go down
And the world go around
And around and around

"Around and Around" by Mark Kozelek

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