heard	Jeff Buckley			Grace
			Frank Zappa			Sleep Dirt
			Horace Silver			Pencil Packin Papa
			Weather Report			Heavy Weather
			Steve Vai			Alien Love Secrets

 

To Mickey and Matt for their Massive Soul listen carefully, spider of destiny... stomp on the people of earth! (9-3)   You know one day it will be in pages. So, so permanent. You hope it's read with understanding, understanding simultaneous with wonder and a sense of discovery. Open your soul windows, look at the writer underneath, not the words.   he whips his head this way, and then that, binky and bottle go flying.   Sometimes the baby just pisses me off. He cries when I write on the computer, he doesn't like the sound of my guitar amplifier, and in my more selfish moments I think he knows that he sometimes takes my wife away from me. And I want, want, want, to be mad at him. And I lean over the edge of the bassinet to scowl. To pout. To be angry.   and he grins at me, and it's all gone... all ...gone. damn, he's good.     It looks like the storm is starting to break. I have been offered a job (one I intend to take) with Alltel as a technical writer. Better money, killer benefits, and maybe what I really wanted after all -- a steady gig. I won't stand here and say I will never teach again, or that doing that job was a mistake. After all of this time, I think what it boils down to is that I went into teaching exactly the way I wanted to, with both barrels blazing. Maybe it's just how I am, but I spilled a lot of (maybe too much) blood into that job, and now that I have had time to stand away from it, I realize just how anemic the ride has left me. I want to write, to get published. Even though I got some good work out in the past two years, I really never could focus on my writing the way I really wanted to. There was always the kid who didn't get it, the kid who couldn't spell, the kid who needed a ride to school, the lessons that weren't in the curriculum that needed to be taught no matter who got angry about it. But then there has been this interim. This hiccup in the fabric that has been all at once wonderful and humiliating. I have been granted through my own unfortunate fate a vacation from work where I could watch Curren grow, spend time with Kim, and catch up on sleep not allowed before the fall. So I dived into Daytime TV and fast food, a part of my bachelor upbringing romanced by the freedom from care that is the between jobs period. Belly full of potato chips and Days of Our Lives, I have gotten time to be with my family, collect some unemployment checks, and perhaps regroup for the next leg of this marathon. Of course a three month old baby and the idea of free time are more or less mutually exclusive, added to the fact that I couldn't help but feel like a schmuck for essentially fighting the system so hard it got me fired, stranding my family without insurance and income...   I couldn't let it go.   When my student sang like an angel at a graduation ceremony that wouldn't have been held if it hadn't been for me, a graduation ceremony that I was a spectator at, instead of a participant.... When another student that wasn't even in any of my classes thanked me for helping inspire her... it was hard to hear that and know that I wasn't going back, that I wasn't allowed to go back. It hurt to feel that pride without any sort of way to apply it. I started staying up late, unable to sleep because of frustrations and things left unsaid. I became snappy, brutish. And with Kim starting out on a new business venture, I became a baby-sitter. I was glad for the time. There had been some early bonding troubles for me, because -- quite simply -- I was always at work, even when I was at home. Curren for all of his absolute adorableness was a chore that needed to be taken care of, not a part of me that needed protection and guidance. I was already caring for children -- students and friends, trying to get them from point A to point B. My priorities were shifted all over the place, and with very little time to react, I think I got screwed up on what was happening. I got to a point where I was sitting in a chair, holding the baby in my lap, listening to Me'shell Ndegeocellos "Wasted Time" (a beautiful song that literally taps straight into the somber caverns of my memories and almost always depresses me in a wonderful, bittersweet way) with tears streaming down my face. I remember asking Kim, "What am I supposed to do if I love him for being my child, but don't like him for being a baby?" Getting used to him while still pouring it out at the school everyday -- I was losing that battle. Plus, after being patient throughout the pregnancy and early toddler time, I was getting impatient. I wanted my wife back. I really don't know another way to put it. I am ashamed to say I had a lot of trouble getting used to the idea of sharing her with the child, especially since he seemed to be taking the lions bite of the deal.   I knew I was being selfish, and I had to try and deal with that. I knew I was burning out on the job, and I had to try and deal with that. I knew that I loved the boy, I just couldn't figure out how to express it.   I couldn't keep it all bottled up, and I became expendable.   In trying to deal with everything, I went for a lot of different bottles. Less than reputable web searches, Playstation marathons, saturated fats and polysorbides. I felt sorry for myself, and in turn I let some things go. I knew there was ample time to write, but my anger and bitterness was too much on the surface -- and words spit out like sheet rain. At a time where I could have done the most good advancing myself as a writer I was wrapped up in how teaching had been taken from me, and how unfair it all was. My students would e-mail me from their new class and tell me that their new teacher was boring, and ask me to answer questions that he didn't know the solutions to... in other words, the job wasn't really over. Officially, I had been laid off, but the reality of things was that I had been   amputated   and for a long while I was still feeling the ghost pains.   but lately it's come around, like a new wind or heaven forbid, a twig falling from a doves beak. God I love this kid, no matter how overwhelmingly needy he seems all the time. And as the new job gets closer, I am getting more excited about starting something new instead of being relieved that I can provide a job, and income, a purpose around here. I let the gig define me... maybe I wanted the gig to define me. I'm not a worker. I'm not a provider, or a breadwinner.   I'm a creator. A writer, A dreamer.   a husband, a father....    let's do this thing.