October in Texas is alternatively blue skied and beautiful, and sweltering and oppressive. The diffused light of this most glorious month lies, sometimes: peering outward, you’d expect the air to whisper its sun-ripened promises, but half the time you’re met with a hot, brutal weight that embeds itself in your brain. Humid betrayal in the pale light. Autumn’s golden raiment is brown and crispy.
We went to Glen Rose with some dear friends to celebrate my daughter’s 12th birthday. It was the first gasp of fresh air I’d had in weeks, and a great, 108 degree gasp it was! Dinosaur Valley State Park is a treasure not too far from Dallas. The Paluxy River and the limestone cliffs are tantalizing reminders of the Hill Country. Every October, my mind goes south: Austin-ward. The few Autumns I spent in the city marked me forever. The heat, the light, the overgrown Austin yards, and long walks along the dusty streets, or hot coffee overlooking the pier from Mozart’s. There’s a special magic in central Texas.
My hands and my head are full of unfinished paintings. This year has me questioning all my life choices, and I feel off-balance, flat footed, somewhat impotent. It’s hard to commit to the act of oil painting, the labor and -labor- and bold intention of it. I’m surrounded by actions and decisions that forcefully deny accountability, dragged by the tide of the times toward some ruined shore. How much culpability does my participation bear down upon my head?
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
These roller coaster days parallel Texas’s October weather. Sometimes, my heart swells for my students, my commitment to the work, my desire to serve these kids who really do give me life and hope. Other days, the policies (and policy changes) and lack of consensus about anything, and the fatal indecision and its consequences, which push immutably forward… all of it makes my mind reel. I wake up most nights in a cold sweat. We have a lot to lose, and only in retrospect will we see the cost. We are too close, too close to these problems; we are too close to ourselves; and we care not enough about the life and liberty of our neighbors, valuing only our demands, our ceaseless and selfish “I.” “I.” “I.”
Those who feel the most justified do the most harm.
My kids provide daily reminders that the work matters. There’s much about all this cognitive dissonance that shatters the reasonable mind, but I keep spiraling back to the “essential.” Of course we are essential workers- teachers catch most instances of child abuse. We provide care and nurturing and growth that kids need. We are a service not just to our students, but to their families as well, by providing a safe place for their children while they work. And yes ::gesturing wildly:: Education Matters! Obviously, we are essential. But to receive that designation now, as a political chip- after years of under funding, when the structures of our educational system have been crumbling for decades, when we are over burdened already, and then to be treated as unfortunate casualties in this weird, fractious war? If we are essential, we need the resources to Do Our Jobs. If we are essential, we need the support to Do Our Jobs. If we are essential, should we not be given the same professional dignity as the nurses and doctors to whom we are constantly compared? Hmmm. Essential means valuable and necessary, not expendable. They keep using this word. I do not think it means what they think it means.
So I straddle these questions, while I continue to go to teach, I straddle these questions, and this fine line between work and life, career and profession, calling and -seriously- self preservation. I grapple daily with whether what I am doing is morally acceptable. And when I want to paint, when I really thirst to take this burning in my brain and make it better, I am just too tired.
Recently, I read All Quiet on the Western Front for the first time. I’m reading East of Eden now. I’m embarrassed that after the small taste of Steinbeck I had in high school, I’d never read more of his work… my immature mind did not at all appreciate his wisdom.
“An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.”
We are not meant for this world, but we are called to do our best to make it better. Stay safe out there, friends.
