the ocean always dreamed blue dreams

According to Wikipedia, Janus is the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, endings, and time. He is "usually depicted as having two heads, facing opposite directions; one head looks back at the last year while the other looks forward to the new, simultaneously into the future and the past." He is a good god to remember as we start a new year.

I read somewhere that time exists only so that everyting doesn't happen at once. What a marvelous invention! I have always had a rather conflicted relationship with time. I never feel that I have enough of it, and I rarely feel that I make good use of the time I do have at my disposal. It is only recently that I have begun to silence the hypercritcal voice in my head, as well as the voice that is annoyed that things are not going my way. As usual. This year I have been more successful at seeing that things just are, and moving on, and my life has been the better for it.

Perhaps as a result of that I am also a little bit better at sticking with things I would like to learn. Unfortunately there are a lot of them. I want to learn Chinese, French, Spanish. I want to learn how to do calligraphy and watercolor. I want to incorporate walking and yoga into my daily life. I'd like to eat better. I would like to fix up my house a little. I'd like to travel. I would like to read some better books than my usual fare. I will continue to work on my patience level with my family and students.

But one thing that I have learned to do a little is to take things in baby steps. I got the idea from a comedy,(can't remember the name right now) with Bill Murray and Billy Crystal. Not my favorite, interestingly, and I saw it many years ago. Bill Murray plays a terrible obsessive-compulsive and Crystal helps him improve his life with "baby steps."

So I tell myself that. Just a little at a time. Whatever I accomplish is good. My house is still disorganized, as is my desk at work. Papers are not yet graded. But I did have a truly lovely holiday with my family, and that is enough.

So for now these are some goals that I am committed to.

I am planning on doing yoga two or three times during the week and walking on the weekends.

I am committing to working on my calligraphy and Chinese from now to summer. I am hoping (fingers crossed) to be able to afford the Pimseur method and I can listen to those cd's on the way to work. I think that can work. I checked out the introductory level from my local library (four cd's) and was very successful at listening to them for several weeks. Unfortunately I was less successful at committing anything to memory. But it was a start.

As far as eating better goes I am committing to giving up eating breakfast at McDonald's for the rest of the school year. I would like to give up fast food period, but one thing at a time. I am going to try to add a few more vergetables to our diet. I eat raw carrots almost every day, but I'd like to add more. For now I'm committing to adding green vegetables to at least one to two more family meals per week. Baby steps.

You know I am almost completely surrounded on a daily basis with people under the age of nineteen. I am easily riled. I spend most of my time giving instruction to people who are not listenting to me, who in fact are actively tuning me out. It is very discouraging. But I am committed to continuing to taking a deep breath and speaking calmly, even when it's the fourth time in the ninth class that someone has not heard my directions to not write on the hand-out I gave them. When I do not have "teach" them, my interactions with these people are fun, clever, even joyous. I believe respect is the hallmark of the classroom, but I can say truly that I love my students. I will miss them when they have moved on to other schools and teachers.

Travel. I would love to be able to. I have always wanted to. I have some debt to pay off (NOT credit cards), so maybe a family trip to see something amazing close by. I'm hoping next year to do something far more ambitious. Macchu Piccu, actually. We'll see.


That's it, then. My resolutions for the new year. I don't usually do this, but I have so many things I'm trying to accomplish that I've been wanting for awhile to kind of get it down on paper. My son has been after me for awhile to narrow down my focus, and I knew he was right. I keep talking about the French and the Spanish, but I haven't done anything about them (I can already read Spanish at an elementary level). I'm slating watercolor lessons for the summer (I hope).

Anyway, in keeping with the new year theme and Janus and looking forward and back, here is a poem I wrote earlier in the year for the picture poetry contest. The picture was of bars over a window, such as you might see in an old prison from the last century. I was inspired also by the book "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" by Muriel Barbery that I had just read, as well as some things in my personal life. It is a novel for children, but the author is a philosophy professor and the book is really a series of beautiful little essays. I highly recommend it.

Anyway, without further ado, here is my poem. I hope you all have a beautiful year, one in which you feel surrounded by people who love you, and in which you feel that you have accomplished much.



I see with prisoner’s eyes
The bars,
The antipodes of freedom
They sing their own song
Of chaos banished,
And faith in lady justice,
Who though, trembles
When I am loosed upon the land.
While I, like any creeping creature,
Believe in the righteousness of my misdeeds,
The power of my terrible claws
To rend and tear at the gauzy net of safety
That people wrap around themselves
Ah, well
And now I’m left,
The receding waters of a flood, to contemplate the bars.
My belief in their existence matters not.
Their small, hard, unforgiving righteousness
Is mine
No matter where in this small cell I stand.

I see with eyes unfettered
The sun is breaking fast,
Or setting,
Or at rest.
Out in the world a stem is breaking,
And death is flying fast.
Somewhere I hear
The first breath,
And the last;
And the truth be told-
Or not- no matter.
Still, I hear your story,
However long and slowly told;
I hear the exhaust of a busy world that doesn’t stop;
And somewhere, just out of sight,
The earth creates its’ terrible, indifferent majesty;
And in the faint breeze blowing
I smell wet grass and the rain

Qimissung
January 2, 2011