Adventures of a Teacher Summer (Summer Institute Day 2 — June 13)
Okay, good. No missing day this time (read about yesterday here).
The artwork and poem below should just be the entirety of my entry for the day, but we all know I’ll go on and on anyway…
Ode to My Socks
Pablo Neruda — 1904–1973
Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder’s hands,
two socks as soft
as rabbits.
I slipped my feet
into them
as though into
two
cases
knitted
with threads of
twilight
and goatskin.
Violent socks,
my feet were
two fish made
of wool,
two long sharks
sea-blue, shot
through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons:
my feet
were honored
in this way
by
these
heavenly
socks.
They were
so handsome
for the first time
my feet seemed to me
unacceptable
like two decrepit
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that woven
fire,
of those glowing
socks.
Nevertheless
I resisted
the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere
as schoolboys
keep
fireflies,
as learned men
collect
sacred texts,
I resisted
the mad impulse
to put them
into a golden
cage
and each day give them
birdseed
and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers
in the jungle who hand
over the very rare
green deer
to the spit
and eat it
with remorse,
I stretched out
my feet
and pulled on
the magnificent
socks
and then my shoes.
The moral
of my ode is this:
beauty is twice
beauty
and what is good is doubly
good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool
in winter.
Wow. I mean, DID YOU READ THAT? Read it again.
Oh, and also this one:
Just look at that and pick a couple of details. Then associate emotions with those details. Then ask yourself what judgments you made and un-make them and look again. Then ask someone else for their emotional response and try to look at it with that emotion. I could go on and on. Today was an interesting day in the NGA Institute!
Basically, we are all still learning to SLOW DOWN and LOOK, which already was easier for me today than yesterday. Then one must FEEL and THINK about the details we notice. These are some of my favorite verbs. I loved the artwork, obvs, but words are really my thang, so that poem (we looked at it in our “Choice session”) just killed me. I love odes and I love Neruda, but I do not recall ever reading this poem before. It is so physically descriptive, and then captures perfectly one way I’ve tried to live. Don’t wait for a special occasion to use and do the special occasion things. Make today a special occasion by using and doing the special things.
I mean, the poem’s so lovely and we did an exercise where we got to list a color, an image, and a symbol that we felt from the poem or that related to the poem and the group’s ideas were all so different and insightful. Then, I had this text exchange with my 18 year-old son:
So, I think I’m WINNING the parenting game today!
In other news, I made my first FLAP in my accordion journal.
Cakes are also “doubly good”. It’s a theme.
As a teacher, I’ve generally been skilled at creating a space where students feel comfortable sharing their ideas taking intellectual risks. Students don’t dread coming to my class, and many students even (maybe) look forward to it on a regular basis. I’m excited to add some of this art-related thinking to my repertoire (and learning how to spell repertoire) to help students THINK about their thinking and have some ideas about how they generally approach art and the world around them.
Can I open a philosophy class for middle schoolers? If there was ever a public school to do that, Takoma Park Middle School is IT!
The rest of my day could be entitled..
“How Many Outfits Must One Sweat Through to Get One’s Phone Screen Repaired?”
Spoiler! It’s 3
The phone repair place is on 7th and I’m on 17th which IS NOT THAT FAR, but, OH MY GOD! IT IS SO HOT AND HUMID IN THIS SWAMP! I managed to rent a Lime Scooter part way to the repair place. I did not die.
I had made an appointment for 5pm and the website said ONE HOUR for screen repair,which would have left me time to get back here for my final session — ART SPA — which I was very much looking forward to.
However, Damian told me that it wouldn’t be ready until 6:30 which is when my ART SPA was supposed to start. Also, they close at 7, so my pick up window was in the middle of my ART SPA. So, dejected, I left the UbreakIFix store on foot and got a milkshake nearby to calm my nerves.
I couldn’t rent a return-scooter without my phone, so, I hoofed it back in the 98 degree swelter (undergarments fully soaked by 11th Street), and tried to figure a way I could do it all. Could I find a coffee shop near the repair place to do my session right after I picked up my phone at 6:30 (it’s all on Zoom)? No. All the coffee shops closed by 7. Could I do it at a bar or outdoor patio with a cocktail? I could, but I’d never make it in time unless I had a scooter, which I could not get and unlock without a phone. If there had been a scooter right outside my door, I could have unlocked it with my tablet on the WiFi, but no such scooter fairy was available, so I abandoned that plan and abandoned my ART SPA SESSION and headed to pick up my phone…
BECAUSE I CANNOT LIVE 17 HOURS WITHOUT MY PHONE!!
I need help.
I was able to unlock a bike-share bike to go pick up my Phone and it looks pristine and everyone in the shop was very friendly. I made it back to my little rental apartment and hung my sweat-soaked bra up to dry before I visit with friends in an hour.
Mostly, I think I persevered in my phone-repair-adventure because of these life-affirming signs hanging all over this rental (which is just a bedroom with a small kitchen and bathroom):
When I sent my daughter a text message with pictures of all of these signs, she texted back:
So, as I said, I’m WINNING!