This is a reclaiming of what has always been mine, like a
Birthright
some new rites
This is a redreaming of my home life, and a new wife
I can change my colors watch my wings unfurl
Expressing both a boy and and still my inner girl
This is a rejoining to my umbilicus
Deepening some roots that I could always trust
Can I explain the feelings deep inside my gut
I'm finally giving in to greatest impetus
for now still so tethered
every plan makes life better
gathering my life in colored jigsaw pieces
finally a picture emerges from just chaos
It's my reflection after all, and this portrait I'm creating
From the ripples, the ripples of the life I'm living
ripples from chaos in colored jigsaw pieces
ripples from chaos in colored jigsaw pieces
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Emotional Rescue
Dear Parent of the Children of Earth:
I just want to talk to you seriously for a minute about your children. I have been a teacher for twenty years. I have watch children, the institution of childhood, change over the years. Children today are far more 'wise' for their years and stressed out than they used to be -- as a group. I see so many more children who are at the breaking point.
Sure, most are survivors. They get hardened, inured, or over confident. Other children become ill or emotionally fragile, too many get eating disorders, or electronic addictions. Some find security and acceptance in gangs, some go internal. We have too many suicides, deaths by cop, or alcohol fueled car deaths.
I do not want to sound hysterical, but our modern culture is failing children.
They are not getting the parental support, or familial support they used to. Schools are poor and somewhat barren places that focus on the hardest to teach and let's the rest barely succeed. There are no resources for us to do a lot better than that, and the resources are flowing away. Fewer people have kids, and thus fewer care about them.
This is our next generation!! We are polluting and spending them out of existence.
This is a call to all parents, at least. Help the kids! They need COLLEGE education, information, critical thinking skills, and a healthy slender body -- they need to be open minded, flexible, and ready to learn and adapt to new situations. They need high self esteem and a warm regard for others, and a suspicion of stupidity, rhetoric, dogma, and intolerance.
I want a good place to grow old. I want ALL your children to be well. I want Earth to be healthy enough to support us for some more generations.
Sadly and Lovingly,
Teacher
I just want to talk to you seriously for a minute about your children. I have been a teacher for twenty years. I have watch children, the institution of childhood, change over the years. Children today are far more 'wise' for their years and stressed out than they used to be -- as a group. I see so many more children who are at the breaking point.
Sure, most are survivors. They get hardened, inured, or over confident. Other children become ill or emotionally fragile, too many get eating disorders, or electronic addictions. Some find security and acceptance in gangs, some go internal. We have too many suicides, deaths by cop, or alcohol fueled car deaths.
I do not want to sound hysterical, but our modern culture is failing children.
They are not getting the parental support, or familial support they used to. Schools are poor and somewhat barren places that focus on the hardest to teach and let's the rest barely succeed. There are no resources for us to do a lot better than that, and the resources are flowing away. Fewer people have kids, and thus fewer care about them.
This is our next generation!! We are polluting and spending them out of existence.
This is a call to all parents, at least. Help the kids! They need COLLEGE education, information, critical thinking skills, and a healthy slender body -- they need to be open minded, flexible, and ready to learn and adapt to new situations. They need high self esteem and a warm regard for others, and a suspicion of stupidity, rhetoric, dogma, and intolerance.
I want a good place to grow old. I want ALL your children to be well. I want Earth to be healthy enough to support us for some more generations.
Sadly and Lovingly,
Teacher
Saturday, February 28, 2009
The House on Laidley Street
When I was a very little girl,
I lived near the bay.
I had an Uncle and an Aunt
In whose house I loved to stay.
Theirs was a house on Laidley Street.
They lived there with my Nanny.
I didn’t know whose mother she was,
But I knew that she was my granny.
My mom and my dad and my sister and brother,
Lived a freeway away, a skyway away.
We would sometimes drive to the city
If we wanted a foggy day.
We might go to the big park
To see Hippie Dippys
Or go to the Wharf
To eat crab and French bread
And walk several blocks
To get samples of chocolate
From the square place
But I never knew why it was a square.
We might visit our family that lived in the Sunset
The lovely house with the stairs made to bounce
on, and oh, what a basement,
so much room to explore.
I loved that old house, on every floor.
Especially Sundays, when I could crawl into bed
With Grandpa and Bubby, and be all safe in my head.
I watched her put in her teeth and him put a foot on the wall
To help her tie her girdle and I was part of it all.
It made me have a family,
It made me have a home,
Maybe it helped me
Write a warm, homey poem.
If I was real lucky, I would go to Chinatown to eat
That might get me cheering and stomping my feet.
The waiter named Jimmy brought us special new dishes,
Things not on the menu, at least not in English.
The best thing I could do, the best people to greet,
Would be the Aunt, Uncle and Nanny on Laidley Street.
Aunt Ruth was all cotton, white, wrinkled and short.
She cooked and she read books and corrected my grammar.
She used to teach 6th grade, and I guess she expected,
Her nieces and nephews to be her best students.
Uncle Henry was a genius is everything science.
He was a teacher in high school and college.
He knew about stars and he knew about plants.
He used to make us stand on his feet and he’d dance.
San Francisco is built on hills
Laidley Street is on top of one
Surrounded by parks and awesome views
Just getting there was so much fun.
The streets are narrow
The houses were cute
The house we were looking for way up high
I had to look for it in the sky.
Finally we would wind our way
Like a corkscrew round and round
Up to the very top where air smelled cleaned
And you could look
way down
Way up high on Laidley Street
The house was up so high
That you had to climb a thousand steps
Enough to make me sigh
But up I’d climb and inside, too
There were many many stairs.
But the solarium was on the top
And it was worth the climb.
The place I would go when I got to the house
Was the solarium every time.
Uncle Henry was there
Or he would be in the backyard.
Another climb up many steps
It was getting hard
To keep up climbing but there he would be
Bent over flowers or pruning a tree
Always ready to give a lesson to me
And tell me the flowers or at night the sky
He always had answers
I always asked why
He always had answers
Although I would try to ask questions that he couldn’t answer
I never could stump him
He knew so much stuff.
There is a funny thing about my Aunt and my Uncle,
That made all the cousins secretly smile.
We loved my Uncle, he was a great guy
But there was one thing he had
And he seemed to not know
But oh it was so
My uncle had horrible breath.
Now that isn’t so funny
But the next part is
My Aunt was his perfect mate
She had a problem that bugged her a little
Her smeller did not work so great.
So even though he could bring tears to a grown-up,
She thought his scent was first rate.
My Aunt and my Uncle, and my really old Nanny,
Lived a long time on Laidley Street
It was a sad day for me when they sold that old house
And I still miss the bird they called Petey.
The bird that I knew when I was a child,
And I visited Laidley Street.
I lived near the bay.
I had an Uncle and an Aunt
In whose house I loved to stay.
Theirs was a house on Laidley Street.
They lived there with my Nanny.
I didn’t know whose mother she was,
But I knew that she was my granny.
My mom and my dad and my sister and brother,
Lived a freeway away, a skyway away.
We would sometimes drive to the city
If we wanted a foggy day.
We might go to the big park
To see Hippie Dippys
Or go to the Wharf
To eat crab and French bread
And walk several blocks
To get samples of chocolate
From the square place
But I never knew why it was a square.
We might visit our family that lived in the Sunset
The lovely house with the stairs made to bounce
on, and oh, what a basement,
so much room to explore.
I loved that old house, on every floor.
Especially Sundays, when I could crawl into bed
With Grandpa and Bubby, and be all safe in my head.
I watched her put in her teeth and him put a foot on the wall
To help her tie her girdle and I was part of it all.
It made me have a family,
It made me have a home,
Maybe it helped me
Write a warm, homey poem.
If I was real lucky, I would go to Chinatown to eat
That might get me cheering and stomping my feet.
The waiter named Jimmy brought us special new dishes,
Things not on the menu, at least not in English.
The best thing I could do, the best people to greet,
Would be the Aunt, Uncle and Nanny on Laidley Street.
Aunt Ruth was all cotton, white, wrinkled and short.
She cooked and she read books and corrected my grammar.
She used to teach 6th grade, and I guess she expected,
Her nieces and nephews to be her best students.
Uncle Henry was a genius is everything science.
He was a teacher in high school and college.
He knew about stars and he knew about plants.
He used to make us stand on his feet and he’d dance.
San Francisco is built on hills
Laidley Street is on top of one
Surrounded by parks and awesome views
Just getting there was so much fun.
The streets are narrow
The houses were cute
The house we were looking for way up high
I had to look for it in the sky.
Finally we would wind our way
Like a corkscrew round and round
Up to the very top where air smelled cleaned
And you could look
way down
Way up high on Laidley Street
The house was up so high
That you had to climb a thousand steps
Enough to make me sigh
But up I’d climb and inside, too
There were many many stairs.
But the solarium was on the top
And it was worth the climb.
The place I would go when I got to the house
Was the solarium every time.
Uncle Henry was there
Or he would be in the backyard.
Another climb up many steps
It was getting hard
To keep up climbing but there he would be
Bent over flowers or pruning a tree
Always ready to give a lesson to me
And tell me the flowers or at night the sky
He always had answers
I always asked why
He always had answers
Although I would try to ask questions that he couldn’t answer
I never could stump him
He knew so much stuff.
There is a funny thing about my Aunt and my Uncle,
That made all the cousins secretly smile.
We loved my Uncle, he was a great guy
But there was one thing he had
And he seemed to not know
But oh it was so
My uncle had horrible breath.
Now that isn’t so funny
But the next part is
My Aunt was his perfect mate
She had a problem that bugged her a little
Her smeller did not work so great.
So even though he could bring tears to a grown-up,
She thought his scent was first rate.
My Aunt and my Uncle, and my really old Nanny,
Lived a long time on Laidley Street
It was a sad day for me when they sold that old house
And I still miss the bird they called Petey.
The bird that I knew when I was a child,
And I visited Laidley Street.
National Board Certification
The long process has come to an end. The box is in the mail. I do not ever have to think about that particular set of experiences again. I will never again have to view that video clip that had 15 seconds of my ass, and a sweater that shows every extra pound. Tonight I get to go out and celebrate with sushi and sake. It is a good life - tonight it is.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
I Sleep Innocent
I may be getting older
Fine lines are hard to hide
I may be kind of jaded
Hard to avoid in our times
For all the dark uncertain knowledge I have managed to attain
I cast it all aside
Underneath the covers
If you peek inside my mind
I sleep innocent
When I close my eyes
I may sometimes be guilty
Human lives are not without some blame
I may show my imperfections
I bear blemishes not shame
For all the little cracks that show beneath the smooth cool front
I can shut the world
That I immerse in
Unmercifully out
I sleep innocent
When I close my eyes
I bathe upon my comfort
Like rose petals on a pond
Let the evil seep away
I sleep innocent
A child in my mind
A child’s breath
A child’s hope
Grand plans for my tomorrows
I sleep innocent
Fine lines are hard to hide
I may be kind of jaded
Hard to avoid in our times
For all the dark uncertain knowledge I have managed to attain
I cast it all aside
Underneath the covers
If you peek inside my mind
I sleep innocent
When I close my eyes
I may sometimes be guilty
Human lives are not without some blame
I may show my imperfections
I bear blemishes not shame
For all the little cracks that show beneath the smooth cool front
I can shut the world
That I immerse in
Unmercifully out
I sleep innocent
When I close my eyes
I bathe upon my comfort
Like rose petals on a pond
Let the evil seep away
I sleep innocent
A child in my mind
A child’s breath
A child’s hope
Grand plans for my tomorrows
I sleep innocent
Liping Poetry
This is about the teaching of math and how it’s all connected
How Chinese teachers explain this stuff in lessons they’ve selected
American children and Chinese learn to use subtraction
But only the Chinese teachers could explain the topic to Ma’s satisfaction
American teachers were less aware of what is called decomposition
A more general way to understand numbers, a Chinese teacher tradition
To understand subtracting of three digit numbers, with borrowing, if you will
Kids need to know how numbers work and retain ideas from adding still
If seven hundred forty three minus sixty two
Is a puzzlement for a few
Go back and start with thirteen minus five, since ten and three are easier to see
Then sixty and two or seven hundred and forty and three
Ten
And
Three
Easy to see
Ten and three minus five
Ten minus five plus three
Number play
If it can be put together
It can be taken apart
Compose and
Decompose
Add and then subtract
The topic of dividing by fractions is as simple
As knowing that the undoing of division is multiplication
Doing and Undoing
Liping Through Mathematics
Know how to prove, how to represent in many ways
Know the fundamental laws
Commutative, Associative and Distributive
Associative, Distributive and Commutative
Associate and Distributive and Commutative and Distributive
Liping Through Mathematics
Doing the Dance of Math
Undoing the dance of math?
Doing the undance of math undoing the undance of math doing the dance of math
How Chinese teachers explain this stuff in lessons they’ve selected
American children and Chinese learn to use subtraction
But only the Chinese teachers could explain the topic to Ma’s satisfaction
American teachers were less aware of what is called decomposition
A more general way to understand numbers, a Chinese teacher tradition
To understand subtracting of three digit numbers, with borrowing, if you will
Kids need to know how numbers work and retain ideas from adding still
If seven hundred forty three minus sixty two
Is a puzzlement for a few
Go back and start with thirteen minus five, since ten and three are easier to see
Then sixty and two or seven hundred and forty and three
Ten
And
Three
Easy to see
Ten and three minus five
Ten minus five plus three
Number play
If it can be put together
It can be taken apart
Compose and
Decompose
Add and then subtract
The topic of dividing by fractions is as simple
As knowing that the undoing of division is multiplication
Doing and Undoing
Liping Through Mathematics
Know how to prove, how to represent in many ways
Know the fundamental laws
Commutative, Associative and Distributive
Associative, Distributive and Commutative
Associate and Distributive and Commutative and Distributive
Liping Through Mathematics
Doing the Dance of Math
Undoing the dance of math?
Doing the undance of math undoing the undance of math doing the dance of math
Ennui
I have to do a final bit of work on my Nation Board portfolio. Tomorrow I have a date to do a final edit and burn the DVDs and package the fucker up to send it off. Good riddance! A worthy timesucker, but still...
Slump time of the year at school--
still winter
no more holidays until spring break
not time to gear up for testing
kids are itching...
This too shall pass - it does every year. As soon as we cannot bear it any more - it will be a new season.
The sun will warm our lives and fuel the hope and optimism that has been recently sparked.
My heart is up and out and ready to be warmed.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
National Boards
I want to report that I have now finished the rough draft of all four entries of the portfolio. Now I will need to perfect these and then study for the exam. For now I am extremely relieved. Look at my relieved face.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
San Francisco
Finally have a place to sleep in the city. Now I have to face a reverse commute, and it is long and will get boring. This will likely expedite my being done with the school district and finding my next adventure. I have loved being a teacher. I am not done, but other urges press. I have so many plans, so many dreams, so many creations inspired but not launched.....
so many.
...and thus another day is worth waking up for...
so many.
...and thus another day is worth waking up for...
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
From Deep Inside
From deep inside I feel a longing begin to unfurl. A primal scream that begins in my toes and rushes along my body, transforms my world. Colors and patterns swirl like soldiers in the service of my need. I need it. I must enter into a world that invites release, calls for release, requires release. I can tell by my sarcasm, my need to watch someone squirm, my not letting any little thing go by, that it is time. It is my time to rise with bloody intent and demonic focus. Blood lust screams in my ears and sharpens my eye. I start to eye kitchen tools with a somewhat fiendish glee. I know what is coming and I hasten it; I cackle with anticipation of the rituals and innovations that will soon unfold.
My lover knows. She preens. She picks at me to find the end of the thread. When she does, she rips it from my bosom. She takes unto herself the passion and the thrust. She helps me strip her naked and take my fill of her need and her gift. We drink greedily together from the fountain of sensation and control. Together we reach the heady lightness of living fully in the passion that is our pinnacle. Our humanity confirmed, we relax in this certainty - knowing that Truth and Reality are ours to know.
When this knowledge fades, as human knowledge is prone to do, we put on our shoes and walk again where tenderness is not well rewarded.
I cover myself so as to keep my precious bits from the glare that reflects off the sand.
My lover knows. She preens. She picks at me to find the end of the thread. When she does, she rips it from my bosom. She takes unto herself the passion and the thrust. She helps me strip her naked and take my fill of her need and her gift. We drink greedily together from the fountain of sensation and control. Together we reach the heady lightness of living fully in the passion that is our pinnacle. Our humanity confirmed, we relax in this certainty - knowing that Truth and Reality are ours to know.
When this knowledge fades, as human knowledge is prone to do, we put on our shoes and walk again where tenderness is not well rewarded.
I cover myself so as to keep my precious bits from the glare that reflects off the sand.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Spyhole Filters
How could it have gotten worse today? Why am I always involved? Sometimes I wish I was the kind of person who was able to have my own focus, the let things be type. But I am so not. Injustice upsets me like it does the kids. Not as petty, perhaps, but I get just as indignant. I know that I am still a kid. In so many fundamental ways my thinking is unchanged. There is a veneer of perspective, abstraction, civilization, ethics, maturity---whatever you want to call it. More than a veneer. Another me. A kid me. An adult me. A me from every age. To be a full adult is to be a multiplicity. A collection of lenses that I can use as spyhole filters and peer at the world.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Work Rant
I just have to say that I am damn sick and tired of school politics!! Bitch and moan and bitch and moan some more. But let there be a chance to complain to the right people, they all turn into sheep!!
I feel a little bit better.
I'd rather put my energy into giving beatings and having sex.
I feel a little bit better.
I'd rather put my energy into giving beatings and having sex.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
One More for Tonight
One more mood I want to capture. Just cause. Felt like sharing weird and playful.
Late Night Musings -- Catch Me
Catch
Catch at my heart
You know the way into my essence
You make me
You make me cry out
Passion
Passion can gasp or scream
Passion can cry or groan
I scream to get your attention
Even your disdain is better than the hollow of loneliness
Breath
Catch my breath
Capture yours
I've captured you
Cry out
Caught
Longings
I am finding that I am longing for so many things. It used to be food and women. Lately it is San Francisco and city excitement, and of course women. I am longing for community. Not that I do not have people, but...
I am longing for community.
I am longing to shed to ache of The Little Match Girl.
Finally, the mommy has taken her hand and has shown her the way to warmth.
I had to become the mommy to accomplish that.
So, now the longings are safe to have. Now I long, and soon I shall have...those things I waited for.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Summer
This summer is going to be a very intense transitioning time. The spouse is finishing becoming. The eldest is getting jaw surgery. The younger is starting the hormone part of his transition. We shall be moving to the city. I will be planning my exit strategy from the school district.
I have a plan for turning 50. I will start doing the things I put off until 'the right time." 50 is the right time.
Move to the city. Write that book. Start the doctorate. Wean from District. Find a performance art that suits. Take more time to travel. Take more time to play. Explore! Create! Get the rest of the weight off.
Life is full!
I have a plan for turning 50. I will start doing the things I put off until 'the right time." 50 is the right time.
Move to the city. Write that book. Start the doctorate. Wean from District. Find a performance art that suits. Take more time to travel. Take more time to play. Explore! Create! Get the rest of the weight off.
Life is full!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Explorations
I am always exploring, but rarely chronicling my adventures. Many of my past journeys are on my flickr account. (corrykbythebay) Many more are still waiting to be uploaded. Stay tuned for reminiscences and new accountings.
Meanwhile some tidbits:
Recent SF sunset.
The Castro at night.
SF Pride 08
San Francisco
I have had a love affair with the city as long as I can remember. What else would make me have a warm spot in my heart for Tony Bennett? I understood the feelings of that song before I could understand the words. Hills and skinny houses, crabs and palaces - my home. Somehow I have always been on the outside, in the suburbs, held by parents and school first, and children and career for a long time after.
It is time to go home. Next summer, I will be moving back to my city. I have hundreds of little explorations to make.
It is time to go home. Next summer, I will be moving back to my city. I have hundreds of little explorations to make.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Getting to Know You
I could not possibly. It will take time. My past events do not define me. For this I am thankful. Just thankful. Not to a god, and especially not to a God. Not that I think such does not exist, but I am loathe to name what I cannot define or describe. I cannot ascribe either motive or intent to such. The origin of 'variable' is my only conception. Too, that begins to define me as well. So, like most, my concept of divinity is a reflection of my internal consciousness, created in my own image, if you will. Most won't.
Hedonism is an interesting thing. Excess leads to certain discomfort, so a certain self-denial is crucial to greatest pleasure. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis....oh, boundaries that allow creation.
Oh dear, religion, psychology and then philosophy. Most that have not fled will retreat in horror when I trot out the math. (Laughing hysterically now.) Then, the few that still want to read will find the perversions, the kink, the absolute shadow of the woman I present to the physical world on a daily basis.
Enough for now.
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