The golden age
I am out to dinner with Ray Bradbury. It’s raining hard outside. My entree is gone, and I’m left with coffee, a book in my lap, and my phone in hand.
Learning is something I’ve never figured out. I am a laggard, a loafer, and an idiot.
I want to be dragged across life like a messy paintbrush. Knowing you, you might scoff or smile at my using passive voice there, but I don’t think stars or quarks worry about where they are going in life, and from what I can tell, they’re having a hell of a time.
Some day I’ll have children, and I’ll pray. My hope is that my son will hold an ear of corn all afternoon, turning it over and over in his hands, deciding with every breath to wonder more.
This evening I harbor the suspicion that there are wanderers, and wonderers, and wandering wonders: the widening gyre. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll wake at dawn to discover the first midden heap, the anchor, the memory. But I doubt it.
My mind is open, my lips are parted, but my heart is lost in some deep wood.
Someday I might know why rain makes me feel old. Now, I hide from the knowledge.
The day we understand is the day we die.
Home
Life has been more splendid than I ever thought possible lately.
After a grueling medley of jobs stretching through last summer and on into the fall, things have been settling down. I’ve started working as a computer instructor. At one job, during the day, I teach computer literacy in a recovery program. The individuals to whom I teach at this job vary widely in skill level; some people have never used a mouse before, whereas others are proficient with office applications already. It’s a job that requires a lot of adaptation, patience, and love of learning. Being present for someone’s first Google search has been one of the most illuminating experiences of my life—compellingly, far more so than my own first Google search!
My life-long dream of being an educator is slowly materializing. The opportunities to teach are frequent and meaningful. Already I’m working on projects to expand the programs I’m working in, so that we’ll be teaching a far broader scope of material to a great number of people.
In my free time, I’m tackling an unprecedented number of personal projects. In the past few months, I’ve written several utile Python scripts to get work done around the house, so to speak, and I’m back on the horse with improving my guitar technique. After a few more weeks, I should be ready to start sharing the fruits of these labors on this blog, like I used to in the good old days.
All in all, I have never felt so at home.
[caption id="attachment_1093" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The doormat my lovely girlfriend bought for me on my birthday"]
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(See the Flickr page for story of the doormat.)