stuckbetweenStations.

"Never go on trips with anyone you do not love."

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:50:29 -0500

“Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.”

- Ernest Hemingway (via rulesformyunbornson)

AGREED.

"The best way is not to fight it, just go. Don’t be trying all the time to fix things. What you run..."

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:49:21 -0500

“The best way is not to fight it, just go. Don’t be trying all the time to fix things. What you run from only stays with you longer. When you fight something, you only make it stronger.”

- Chuck Palahniuk; Invisible Monsters (via runawaytrain)

"To you, whom it may concern: Manly creature, who smells good even when you don’t, you wake up too..."

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:37:09 -0500

“To you, whom it may concern:
Manly creature, who smells good even when you don’t, you wake up too slowly, with fuzzy, vertical hair and a slightly lost look on your face as though you are seven or seventy-five; you can fix my front door, my sink, and open most jars; you, who lose a cuff link and have to settle for a safety pin, you have promised to slay unfortunate interlopers and dragons with your Phillips head or Montblanc; to you, because you will notice a woman with a healthy chunk of years or pounds on her and let out a wolf whistle under your breath and mean it; because you think either rug will be fine, really it will; you seem to walk down the street a little taller than me, a little more aware but with a purpose still; to you who codifies, conjugates, slams a puck, baits a hook, builds a decent cabinet or the perfect sandwich; you who gives a twenty to the kids selling Hershey’s bars and waits at baggage claim for three hours in your flannel shirt; you, sir, you take my order, my pulse, my bullshit; you who soaps me in the shower, soaks with me in the tub; to you, boy grown-up, the gentleman, soldier, professor, or caveman, the fancy man with initials on your towels and salt on your chocolates, to you and to that guy at the concession stand; thank you for the tour of the vineyard, the fire station, the sound booth, thank you for the kaleidoscope, the Horsehead Nebula, the painting, the truth; to you who carries me across the parking lot, up the stairs, to the ER, to roll-away or rice mat; to you who shows up every so often only to confuse and torment, and you who stays in orbit, always, to my left and steady, you stood up for me, I won’t forget that; to you, the one who can’t figure it out and never will, and you who lost the remote, the dog, or your way altogether; to you, wizard, you sang in my ear and brought me back from the dead, you tell me things, make me shiver; to the ones who destroyed me, even if for a minute, and to the ones who grew me, consumed me, gave me my heart back times ten; to most everything that deserves to call itself a man: How I do love thee, with your skill to light fires that keep me warm, light me up.”

- A Thank-you Note To Men / Mary Louise Parker (via Linds) (via deliberatepace)

"And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for all the things..."

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:44:39 -0500

““And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for all the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves or play the violin the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I’ve never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world? He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.””

- -Sweet Granger of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451

I just finished this book with an after-school book club I started for children who share my love of words. Began the club for several reasons, mostly for the selfish one where it distracted me from the sad & inspired me towards the happy for the sake of the children. However, I hadn’t read this passage. I wasn’t prepared for it, and I read it, blind, to them, today, aloud. It nearly killed me-but not because of my father’s death.

I looked up and their eyes, which I had arrogantly assumed would be on me, were fixated on the text. Furrowed brows with understanding eyes & too many faces who clearly had felt what Granger felt. What I had felt, too. It was the first tangible good I can count from all of this, and I am thankful for it.

copycats: Merry Christmas Baby - Otis Redding (posted by...

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 09:49:35 -0500

copycats:

Merry Christmas Baby - Otis Redding

(posted by sometimesagreatnotion)

This is one of my very favorite Christmas covers in the whole world - no good Christmas mix is complete without it!

mmmm. otis.

Last night, I found comfort in the BBC program recently released...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:16:00 -0500

Last night, I found comfort in the BBC program recently released on DVD entitled “Nature’s Most Amazing Events.” I say comfort, but perhaps that is an understatement of sorts because I slept better, more soundly even, than I have in weeks after watching two segments: one on the great melt, and one on the great salmon migration. I have always been a sucker for a good nature documentary. It is no secret that I was once truly addicted to and possessed a countdown for the Discovery Channel’s yearly Shark Week program. But this! It made me long for a big screen in HD & the skillset to be a nature filmmaker.

First, who knew there was a such thing as a “unicorn of the sea?” It was love, man. Upon further research, I learned that they are actually called Narwhal whales & that they use their unicorn-horns to break the ice as they traverse thousands of miles as part of their yearly summer migration. Dangerous, too, you know, because they are mammals & require the air to breathe & that ice is just not always broken and their poor tusks can’t always do it and one breath only lasts them fifteen minutes. There were also starving polar bears, and little birds who crash land after their first flight, and foxes who have color-changing coats.

Then! We moved into the Great Salmon Migration. I was hesitant because after all, they are just fish, right? How could an hour tracking the progress of a group of hormone-plagued legless creatures prove interesting? Except! Grizzlys come out of the woodwork in time for the migration and depend on their vast numbers to eat up tons before hibernation. They feed their cubs off the swarm and go to great lengths to catch the fish with their toes because they don’t like to get their ears wet. Who knew!

Moreover, and perhaps present in the initial segment on the Arctic Melt, too, was this incredible journey involving adaptation & survival & dominance & mortality. Salmon swim up to 6,000 miles to get back home & lay those eggs. Face all sorts of blunders & many don’t make it. They leap! My trusty narrator made the comparison of a human leaping a four story building. All for what? Home. Comfort, & eventually, inevitably, death.

You really just have to keep going, don’t you? With or without a thousand mile swim or a unicorn tusk-the journey has to have an end.

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest..."

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:40:22 -0500

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

- -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yesterday, while my fourth period (who remains on lockdown for crazy behavior) ate their lunch, one of the sweet ones asked me about a student who had joined our class briefly before being moved to one of my upper level classes. The student has a disability. This is our school’s first year of inclusion-meaning I have all sorts of children with me throughout the day. I am thankful for this; diversity unites us in the neatest way.

Anyhow, sweet one asked what the matter was with our new student, and I offered him an answer which proved most useful to my own identity questions which pop up these days:

I told him that we all were different & needed different things to make us happy and keep us safe. I asked for his agreement, then, and he smiled at me and nodded real quick. I then said that our new addition simply needed his own sort of happy, and that we should all help him to retrieve as much of it as he can from our school. Kid agreed, and ate his cheetos looking awfully satisfied with our talk.

nostrich: I think this is precious. I just wish I thought it...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:34:00 -0500

nostrich:

I think this is precious. I just wish I thought it realistic, too.

If you fear it, do it.

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:13:00 -0500

I have never been so scared to write. For fear of not sounding like me, anymore. I feel like my life will always be split right in two: before it happened. after. Perhaps when other terrible things happen, I’ll get more parts to share. A larger fraction of feelings to disperse among my compatriots.

We are at a month & some change & nothing, even the good things, feel the same way. My responses can never be predicted & I am, at best, a faulty cannon of sardonic statements & oddly-phrased thankyous. Never being one to ask for help, I have now had to succumb to that feeling of weak knees & tear-stained eyeballs to cling quite fiercely to a few folks here and there. I can’t just go showing that face to anyone. Learned that one the hard way. Pretty sure all is learned that way, out here, in the after fraction.

Where light looks dark despite best efforts of kind hearted friends & family too. Where time takes its time to pass & you sleep for days but feel awake even behind the tightest shut eyeballs. I dream awful things not aligned with my sense of self—violence & unimaginable kindness, bright colors in the dead of night. Always a juxtaposition that leaves you sleepy to the toes.

It’s an odd sort of living & I keep hoping for some sort of guidebook. I am told you find that in those who have lived it—but I hate that anyone’s ever felt this & have zero desire to reach out in hopes of feeling better at the expense of a sweet friend re-living a terrible thing on my account. So I keep my mouth shut & wait for the wave to subside. It does. So far, it always does. Add the day it doesn’t to my list of feared items. It grows.

I am also soscared of even the sweetest feelings of good. Case in point: Metric. Charlotte. Two bearded boys I think quite highly of who raise my man-standards daily with their kind hearts & old souls. Fish tacos! Perfect night. I was scared of what morning would bring. Can’t predict it. And for all that good, there is all that bad. I used to believe wholeheartedly in the balance of things & the triumph of our hearts amid even the scaliest of tragedies.

Faith is fading.

Don't stop believin: Solesbeast Style.

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:10:00 -0400

Sweet ones prepare for their First Nine Weeks Showcase: they pick their best effort in terms of creative projects done in class and present it to an assorted audience of parents, faculty, and students. Have the loveliest little girls who re-wrote this for their selection & am positive it’s the sweetest project I’ve ever gotten.

Live like a Solesbeast lyrics

Just a Dinosaur

That’s Miss Solesbees pride and joy

It‘s our mascot in the Solesbeast world

We never give up

Really doesn’t matter what

Like pushing through a biography

We always treat others well

Automatically feel swell

With a smile we can make the day

As we learn, and, learn, and learn, and learn

Students typing

Workin’ on our get started

Our hands are moving just right

All hands raised high

Lookin’ over everybody

Finding the answer that’s right

We never leave work undone

Everything is always fun

Doin’ anything to import grades just one more time

Some will sit, some will talk

Some can’t use the blackboard chalk

Oh the day goes by too fast

As we learn, and learn, and learn, and learn

Students typing

Workin’ on our get started

Our hands are moving just right

All hands raised High

Lookin’ over everybody

Finding the answer that’s just right

Live like a Solesbeast

Totally Not belligerent

All hands raised high

Live like a Solesbeast

Not belligerent

Never give up

Live like a Solesbeast

Totally not belligerent

Treat others well

Live like a Solesbeast

Totally not belligerent

We will succeed

Optimism, I nearly lost you.

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:50:49 -0400

Found myself in a bit of a funk here recently. Was surrounded by nothing Monday to Friday following three pm. My evenings, despite my best efforts, seemed to go on forever. I took early bedtimes aplenty and ate dinner while the sun was still high in the sky. I chose these things, and it nearly killed my spirit. I am a girl who equates busy-ness with happiness, who found herself with nothing to do for a week’s worth of time and nearly lost her head as a result.

You have to pull yourself out of such things, you know. If it comes from your eyes—the version of the world you’ve chosen to construct, I mean, it’s up to you to change the vision and kill the negativity. I tell the children all the time that taking responsibility isn’t a bad thing—once it is no one else’s fault, you can finally figure out how to fix it yourself. I had to fix this myself.

After lots of thought & a list or two (I do love list-making), I decided that perhaps a part-time job wouldn’t be such a bad option. Would still give me time to do that which I enjoy doing weeknights, like the gym & cooking a delicious dinner, but would make bedtime a more reasonable time & introduce me to a new scene full of new folks with neat stories. Such is the plan. I have found a gig planning little kid birthday parties & a gig pet-sitting in giant empty houses near my school. Not sure how either will pan out just yet, but am thankful for the opportunity & am considering both options evidence to my theory that we can fix things ourselves. If you want a different world, change it.

Leaving it up to others almost always leads to disappointment.

Count it down & make it count.

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:16:00 -0400

Looking forward to the upcoming road trip to Atlanta—it’s a week from Friday. To combat the stressy stench on these middle school hallways, I’ve decided a countdown is in order. Though seeing Katie & her lovely life in A-town sounds perfect all by itself, I’ll have the treat of watching The Gaslight Anthem play in town that Saturday night. Thanks to several very late nights in Boston spent speeding past that Charles River with strangers turned tooclosefriends in a few short weeks—“The Backseat” holds a certain value above the other tracks they’ve written & I am hoping the setlist below is right. Can’t fathom a better close to a set than the lines: “You know the summer always brought it. That wild and reckless breeze. And in the backseat we’re just trying to find some room for our knees.”

The Setlist from an earlier show this month is below.

High Lonesome

Casanova, Baby!

Old White Lincoln

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

The ‘59 Sound

We Came to Dance

Film Noir

Miles Davis and the Cool

The Patient Ferris Wheel

The Navesink Banks

Wherefore Art Thou, Elvis?

Senor and the Queen

Great Expectations

Here’s Looking At You, Kid

The Backseat

copycats: 1901 remixed by The Teenagersoriginally by...

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:28:18 -0400

copycats:

1901 remixed by The Teenagers
originally by Phoenix
(posted by karenabad)

Pretty perfect addition to Friday night’s playlist. Will be sosweet to be back with Peter on that stage.

October, I love you.

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:02:00 -0400

Perhaps it’s the nature of our city, but this month always brings pretty things my way & I am thankful to all ends for that. Ended September with Ms. Marthabeth in Asheville, where The Decemberists re-told Hazards of Love with eloquence only a brain like Colin Meloy can create.

October began this time around with the last night of The Producers at Workshop Theatre. Really fantastic night out followed with new friends aplenty & an endless amount of hijinx, too. Can’t ask for much more than that. Spent Sunday cleaning out CDs & gave into nostalgia via multiple WUSC-spawned mix CDs from now faraway friends who I miss most dearly.

Walking with Dinosaurs will most assuredly start the coming weekend right & then I am eager to DJ at Art Bar with Peter. Next weekend marks the release of Where the Wild Things Are & am heading to Atlanta near the 23rd to revel in a live performance from The Gaslight Anthem & quality time with sweet Katie. HalLoween is shortly after that, & then the month will be done. Sad.

Happy for the coming weeks. Looking forward to things keeps me from looking back on sad things from this time, last year.

slaughterhouse90210: “Perhaps all romance is like that; not a...

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:31:11 -0400

slaughterhouse90210:

“Perhaps all romance is like that; not a contract between equal parties but an explosion of dreams and desires that can find no outlet in everyday life. Only a drama will do and while the fireworks last the sky is a different color.”
— Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

I am re-watching Six Feet Under in between Netflix fixes. Had a neat talk the other evening comparing/contrasting different television series in terms of form and function. I still hold this series as my favorite thing to come out of TV in a very long time.

unexpected kindness:

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:26:31 -0400

We do Academic Plans every year as a means of helping the children who struggle with Standardized Tests get up to par before we scoot them off to high school next year. We divide them up & talk to parents to agree upon a todolist of sorts to help the student work to his or her potential throughout the school year.

I enjoy parents. I live for Open House. They are usually quite sweet to me & tend to enjoy that their child enjoys Language Arts. But in the past, Academic Plan season has been a pain-unreachable parents, lost forms, etc.

So today, I called my last one, sleepy-eyed and ready to roll through the motions: Explain plan, explain why child has plan, etc. And I did, in my grown-up voice. This particular student is pretty stellar, actually, and I paused in my diatribe to explain his overall awesomeness to his very patient mother.

She didn’t have any questions, and right as I was about to close it up & shut it down, she stopped to request if she could ask me a personal question. She simply wanted to know if I had ever had any other professional goals—did I ever want to be anything but a teacher.

I explained to her about the care bears. How I tried to teach them spelling at the ripe age of five and how it was really just a matter of time until my parents constructed a pseudoschoolhouse in our basement & my grannie became my first live student. I didn’t go on for long when she interrupted me.

She went on to wake me right up via the most kind-hearted and sincere wave of compliments to my character & heart that I’ve ever heard from a stranger. Said that all I was, was kindness. That she could hear the passion for my profession in every word I said, & that I truly conducted myself as though I needed no thanks for the good I did every day. That’s true—the children thank me by making me laugh, creating brilliant things, & learning to be comfy inside themselves.

So she thanked me. Explained that she really believed that the good I put out would be repaid to me daily for all my days & that I had many blessings on the way.

Perhaps she is a religious person. I am, too, in my own sort of way. I certainly believe in faith, if nothing else. What got me the most, though, was how outoftheblue this incident was—and how much it meant to me, right away, although it came from a stranger.

Suppose it doesn’t really matter, does it? Kindness is sweetest when it isn’t planned or possessed—when it isn’t tainted by some sort of overarching intention.

I hope she is right about me, too.

Content.

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:58:00 -0400

Have been seriously struggling with the idea, pounded into my head by my own perspectives of moving around a good bit in a military family as a child, that leaving equates to one being successful. If I am ever to be at my best, it surely can’t be in Columbia, South Carolina. Except I have this job that rarely feels like work, & a small, but extraordinary group of girls who make the neatest weekends, & a lovely apartment with a very comfy kitty and a kitchen to cook in, too. I live a bit from an ocean & a bit from a mountain. There are ducks in my backyard. The city sleeps from time to time, but does this fall season remarkably well. There’s beauty all over as the trees turn & outdoor festivals invade our downtown. Solid theatre, independent film, & arts scene, too.

So there’s that.

When I think of where I’d go, I can’t ever settle. When I come home from camp, I want New England. When I come home from anyoutofstatevacay, I want those city limits. I am inconsistently fond of anywhere, really. Had a sweet conversation with my mom the other day about what success means & how she sees this whole ridiculous movetobegreat concept. She quickly corrected me & went on to question how I could see myself as anything but awesome. Parents are supposed to say that.

The biggest anchor to Columbia is this school. & those kids, too. It is too fun to wreck for some shady big city dreams. That’s enough for me to know right now.

oldhollywood: “Personally, I think if a woman hasn’t met the...

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:07:33 -0400

oldhollywood:

“Personally, I think if a woman hasn’t met the right man by the time she’s 24, she may be lucky.”

-Deborah Kerr (via snap)

WORD.

Firefox, you are not as cool as you think.

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:32:19 -0400

Lack of updates mostly equates to my browser not supporting tumblr at all. Things are lovely. Picking right up and have been very busy with the children this year. Have began a blog for them: the things we do, what we talk about, etc. You may find that at misssolesbeastismyteacher.tumblr.com. I don’t suppose I’ll be around these parts much.

"Thanks so much for the communication! You are the teacher I heard MOST about on the first day of..."

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:40:23 -0400

“Thanks so much for the communication! You are the teacher I heard MOST
about on the first day of school! You must have really made an
impression!! Keep it up! I love to hear him so excited about class!”

- New kid’s mom. So very happy to be back.