Frustration, trepedation

I found out this evening that the travel arrangements being made on my behalf officially are ass-backwards from what I had been assuming since January.

Point the first: I now need to buy a domestic roundtrip (ATL-LAX) that I was first told I didn’t need. More money I still don’t have.

Second: I won’t arrive in PEK (with people to take my extra luggage, a place to stay between traveling, and a sweet connection flight to my final destination) like I thought - and I will need to arrange my own travel in-country. So not only am I arriving in SHA with not a soul to greet me, but I have two city-hops to arrange (half a country north, 7/8ths of a country west)… and purchase. Only one hop if I sleep in the SHA airport and drag a suitcase of teaching-month-stuff (which I’m seriously considering not taking) to the decrepit backcountry.

Bah. Blargh. Et cetera.

I’ve been so overly concerned with twisted logistics and increasing expenses recently, that the past few days I’ve been constantly asking myself… why am I doing this again? More to the point, why am I letting everything I once loved get muddled with the general idea of ahhhh-[breath]-ahhhhhh!.

Also, if you happen to see a bundle of faith walk by, please tell it to return home. I miss it.

Souls in transparency, Velvet tongues that aim to please

It’s deliriously easy to state and defend a position when conversing with 1) someone your age, who 2) is a native speaker of your own tongue. Vocabulary grants us the gift of bullshit: the more words you have in your arsenal, the better your shot. Going up against one’s equal among such qualifications is simple enough. Even aiming for high holier-than-thou heads is doable: pull out all your velvet-tongued guns, and you can’t miss. Doesn’t mean you’ll win the game, but at least you’ll have made an acceptable effort.

It’s when you’re forced to strip an idea to its most basic form, however, that the truth is revealed. Eliminate the gilt and glittering shite, and all you’re left with is a single, solitary particle of thought. You honestly can’t know what you know until you reveal its core. Attempt to explain the intangible to innocents and internationals, and degree of success will prove measure of your own mind. Do you really think what you say, believe what you do - until you can convey it to them?

First-graders and foreigners, sounding boards of our conscience.

Ashes in the Desert Place

It’s been a long day — not any moreso than usual, really; it’s Thursday, and the week generally decides to catch up around now. I hit “write post” with the intent to hash out a thoughtbubble on my mind, and checked my email while I waited on the page to load. Funny what a few minutes added onto that ever-so-long day can do.

I’m a list-maker. I like to know what I’m doing, and when I’m supposed to do it. I like schedules, and I take a horribly perverse pleasure in knowing I’ve made a really efficient schedule for any given day. So because I’m taking a full load this semester, plus working part-time, plus tutoring (2 singles, 1 group), I have about 5 different spreadsheet-schedule versions floating around my binders/satchel/car “office”. Don’t take this the wrong way: I’m really not that busy; I’m totally happy this way. Downtime equals time without, well, that cliched quality time – and guess what, Sara’s fairly isolated this semester. So lists, specifically full lists, make her relatively content.

Not everything gets memorialized via neatly-typed ink. Lessonplans happen while driving through the dark, rough drafts outlined mentally through dusk. I think lighteningbugs lend favour to pseudo-flashes of creativity. A lot of the so-called “efficiency” comes from scribbled calendarising during phoned-in 8:00am lectures that take the focus of a single brain cell.

Tonight, as I passed a freshly-baled hayfield, I had the overwhelming urge to pull over. The view tonight was absolutely stunning: after a week of overcast evenings, the stars were showing their eyes for the first time in entirely too long. I only live a few miles up the road from that field, but the light polution is enough to keep that sterling wonder firmly from our back yard.

Instead, I drove on. Too much to do: put the laundry in, write the lab, read the papers, and so on. In the end, I grant salve to a still-restless soul: via a half-hour of presumed rambling. Check email in the process. And find more in a series of unanswered Words, hateful — damnedably, scathingly motherfuckingly hurtful words. That won’t be erased, will haunt, and will go on Permanent Record with the List Committee at Large.

Why do we think we know better, what will soothe and give respite? How can we value 20 scant minutes of all-too-precious peace over the More Efficient, when the end result could only be all-too-predictable?

The Lists are perpetually flawed, and so far: haven’t offered me much in return.