Uncertain times. I’ve begun working in a new medium (alcohol ink). The inks dry quickly and are difficult to control: artistic vision has to be comfortable coexisting with a certain amount of chaos to work with this stuff. Over time, and with practice, the chaos becomes… predictable. I can impart a measure of control because I know, generally, how the materials want to behave. I wonder if I gravitate towards this style because I am caught in such turbulent times. It is impossible to plan anything more than a couple of weeks out right now. Desire hangs suspended.
I’m reading On the Road. I am stuck at home.
My family and I escaped Dallas briefly to visit dear friends in Northern Colorado. What a balm to the spirit is fellowship and time spent with friends! And the mountains always soften the tension of concrete that builds behind my eyes when I’m stuck in the city. I live with longing for vast, un-peopled spaces. My daughter started reading My Side of the Mountain (one of my favorite books when I was a little younger than she is now), and it has been fun to listen to her questions and hear how she relates to the merits of habitable trees.
Slowly now the evening changes his garments
held for him by a rim of ancient trees;
you gaze: and the landscape divides and leaves you,
one sinking and one rising toward the sky.
And you are left, to none belonging wholly,
not so dark as a silent house, nor quite
so surely pledged unto eternity
as that which grows to star and climbs the night.
To you is left (unspeakably confused)
your life, gigantic, ripening, full of fears,
so that it, now hemmed in, now grasping all,
is changed in you by turns to stone and stars.
-Rilke, translated by FC MacIntyre
August approaches. With it, questions I’ve put on hold since March. What was February, some unreal dream? Where was I? Who was I, several months ago?
In February, I received my acceptance into a Masters of Visual Arts program at the University of Texas at Dallas. I had completed by application for Distinguished Teacher at my district, and was praying that the merit salary I hoped to earn this fall would offset the cost of tuition so that I could finally finally go back to school. I’ve learned so much since I scraped my way through graduation in 2007. I really, desperately, want to go back to school.
I’ve learned that education is still mainly for the wealthy. Most graduate programs in the arts require a full time commitment and preclude having a job. This institutional mindset infuriates me: working students shouldn’t be barred from higher learning simply because they have to balance work and school; likewise, the mindset of a working student brings a pragmatism, and an ethos of hard work and dedication, to a graduate program. With the insane cost of higher ed, the mind reels at how one could even afford to take time off to just… have the luxury of being a student.
I had, I thought, found a way to maintain employment in a job I love (and have worked so very hard to attain), and work towards my masters. My seniors and I had bonded over the application process and shared joy at our acceptances, trepidation at the work that awaited us in the fall.
Enter Covid.
August approaches. I need to make some decisions that I’ve put off due to uncertainty, yet things are even less certain now than they were in March. I am a teacher. Will I be returning to the classroom? I’ve been advised to update my will and carry disability this year. Teaching is already an emotionally rewarding/draining profession that requires so much investment. I am trying to be realistic about what the upcoming semester will mean for my mental health. Should I pay $3500/class to start a graduate degree when I have these new stressors? Can I justify the expense?
This public health crisis underscores the fragility of our social contracts. That’s a big, broad, general statement, but it bears mentioning because, if August approaches… so does November. There’s little consensus about anything in our country. What truths do we hold to be self evident, exactly? Do we hold to Truth at all?
I am a teacher. I have seen my countrymen disparage my profession for years. Now I am seeing my neighbors demand their tax dollars back. I watch as politicians devalue the lives of the kids I teach. I witness my own health and livelihood politicized.
Ironically, many of the problems we face today are the consequences of our cultural attitude towards education. We’ve earned this mess.
. . .
Stone, and stars share common elements. Perhaps the theme of this disjointed rambling is: that which may seem incongruous, opposed, unlikely- is not altogether separate at all. Living with flux is learning to breath on the precipice, and finding there a moment of balance. And if we are to salvage ourselves, we must learn to value one another. We must understand that the success of our nation depends upon our collective attitude towards these inalienable rights: that my neighbor’s rights and my own are equally valid, full stop. Polarization leads to radicalization, and that slope is steep and slippery.
