after the feast

coming back from the holiday, trying to get my mind back in track, and naturally, procrastinating - er, blogging.

quite the past four days. first thanksgiving, which was lovely and more low-key this year. and then friday - goodwill hunting w/ rosepag, wonderful nap and 5-year high school reunion. the reunion was a lot more friendly than i thought it would be and i was really glad i went (but perhaps even more glad to have pete to look to and say "wanna get out of here?" whenever i needed to.) i was only slightly blown away that we are all Groan Ups, and it was cool to come back into that milieu with five years of being ourselves. some people seem to have grown up out of that pressure and some seem to have settled or compressed inwards... i'll be optimistically subjective (for what else, really, can i be?) and count myself amongst the former. mostly. honestly, though, it was kind of a triumph to be around them and be at ease, to realize that the demons that i fought back then didn't get the best of me.

saturday was goodbyes and a little correcting, then visiting bill en route to the rosen-baiers. we had pizza & beer and jon told horrible, horrible jokes and i read to benny and told leo about zombies. dropped rosie off w/ her boyfriend in lee and then went to the dreamaway. drama as usual, but it was great to see the old crew (or the new-old crew, i guess.) i begin to wonder how much of the bullshit is essential and sort of the engine of the magic and how much is perhaps the premonitions of the ship going down. and then i stop entertaining those thoughts and am just thankful that such a place exists. it's that kind of alternative reality, even if it's only one weird little restaurant, that makes me wonder if i'll always be coming back to the berkshires - if i'll end up there eventually.

and now here i am, preparing for what is actually my FIFTH week of teaching. it feels like yesterday that i started and at the same time feels like i've been there for a million years. and even though it's the hardest thing i've ever done, and won't stop being difficult ever, really, i found myself telling a lot of my old classmates that i love my life. and i do - seeing all of the options that have become people's lives for the past five years, and seeing mine, it becomes clear that dreams do come true (and then usually grow to astonish us with how mundane they are.) i mean, here i am, planning how to teach a bunch of brooklyn kids about the stories coming from the navel, as it were, of the collective unconscious (persephone myth tomorrow). here i am, guided on every side by men and women and places that are as beautiful as they are crazy, and i get to be the conduit of that beauty and insanity. i guess we all do, though; it's just the amounts we receive and give away that vary.