4 THINGS
Got 4 THINGS on my mind recently,...
(Thinking about the small town where I grew up a student, especially after an ol' hometown pal, who's now a teacher there, took me to task for calling the town "backwoodsy,"...)
THE "CITY" WHERE I GREW UP
Butler, Alabama, a tiny town proclaimed the "City" of "Progress" by the billboards at the "city" limits, is a refuge from big-city chaos-go-go-go-90-all-the-time that I've lived in since the 90s; Butler is my Fortress of Solitude, if I may be so Super Bold and Brave. As much as I want to deride it and find fault with it, I find I can't too much. It's my old home.
I never say anything too bad about it. It would be so easy to scream, "Butler, Butler, Butler did it!" every time some suspicious character weakness from my past arises to shadow me; however, I tend to stay kinda' quiet, just like I did growing up in Butler. If I ever do come down on anything about Butler or anyone who was ever there, I do minimize the comment's negative nature by admitting my own fault for the way things were and are. I try not to play the blame game about where and when I was raised. I do feel I escaped, but not from Butler, more from the past and more from chains I allowed all towns and cities to place on me back there and back then.
That said, Butler is mega-backwoodsy compared to where I live now in Phoenix, Arizona; "backwoodsy" shouldn't have any power as a negative word though. I have taken my partner, San Diego city-boy Carlos, to Butler, but it was miserably hot and 100% humid in July of 2005, so he probably doesn't love Butler so much. Los didn't like the climate but was enchanted by the various graveyards (at least one off of a dirt road through the "backwoods") wherein are generations (several) of my ancestors and was entranced by the echo point out at the landing on the Tombigbee River. While he and I walked the riverbank over the rushing Tombigbee, while the echoes rang across it still, the cricket, frog, and cicada sounds kinda' cast a freaky spell on him.
Even while he was freaked, we didn't really give any Butler humans a chance to see our love in the form of any PDAs. My mom & dad had just met Los in person for the first time then; I wasn't going to push too many buttons too quickly. So, my long point is that I hope I didn't come across as not liking Butler and its verdant countryside; I do love it. Glad I'm away but happy for anyone who stayed. I LOVE to visit.
Butler means a lot to me--I grew much stronger from the bad I experienced there and continue to find joy in the good. I learned much there. Backwoods are places of quiet, rest, relaxation, getting back in touch with Mama's home cookin' and with Mother Nature.
Is Butler womb-y? Maybe it wasn't always back "then," but it is now, a place to gain some strength and then spring fully-formed back out into the world, all Athena-like. Wow, that makes Butler more Zeussy than womb-y. How do I paint myself into these wordy corners?
(After growing up in Butler and teaching for many years in Alabama, Japan, California, and Arizona, I turned a corner in life and moved on to another career. Recently, a teacher friend asked me if I missed teaching. My response about...)
AN OLD PROFESSION
In this great time of marriage debate, I must say to your question of "Do you miss teaching just a teeny little bit?" My answer is, "I DO... not! In good times and bad, in sickness and in (MENTAL) health, I DO not miss teaching."
Just 3 nights ago, I had yet ANOTHER nightmare wherein I was a teacher and all my students were all the unruly talkative, uncooperative, off-task people I've ever met in my life (most of whom weren't even my students in real life). The lesson got to the point where the students had to get quiet, some sort of test, but I just couldn't get them quiet.
The scene dream-shifted to a gigantic church. My dream-self then even said something like, "This is a test, and we're in the house of the Lord, you've got to get quiet." Still, loudness! LOUDNESS!!! What finally woke me up was realizing I was "teaching" former fellow students, grown-up acquaintances, etc., mixed in with some actual former students. My really-observant dream-self was, like, "Whoa, why are you all in my classroom...?"
RING--woke up from riding that nightmare across the fields of Phoenix. Now, I realize nightmares have more to do with what you ate for dinner and what you are processing in your own current life, but really I DO not miss teaching,...
...except for when I DO.
(I do; I don't. How about a new fictional character of mine--is she; isn't she? Introducing Nicola Pound,...)
A NEW CHARACTER
Iron Nick; she bruises easily. Peg her as a villain, then she does something heroic that is villainous in the end but is really heroic. Will she have difficulty with her nemesis Mister Magno--at first, you'd think so--but, nah, it's mostly easy for her with him, BUT, at the same time, it's really hard for her because of her secret-identity job as an Earth-core scientist alongside his and mainly due to her part-time job as a "criminal" attorney. "Isn't it Iron Nick? Don't you think."
Growing up in a town that forged her, into a profession that sharpened her, and through numerous loves and lost loves that both brightened and darkened her, a new superheroine slash supervillain slash superheroine slash supervillain steps forth.
She has too many unfortunate things happening in her life; but, interspersed with all the misfortune, there are also moments of mindbending twistiness that she furiously tries to unravel.
Her least favorite element is, you guessed it, iron. Her skin can be metallic one moment, bullets bouncing off her, but deep inside, you guessed it (OR DID YOU), severe iron deficiency. You'd think a planetary-core scientist would understand the mechanics of deep-dark caves and know which ones are safe from magma intrusions. Was it really just unfortunate that she lost her foster-daughter to death by unexpected magma intrusion there in the Iron Cave, or was it more? She is a paid vulcanologist, after all! Isn't it just Iron Nick? Don't you think...
(Amidst all our work and forging a future around all the corners of the farback past arises...)
A CONTINUING LOVE (or September 27, 2010)
What is that thing that is constant like the sequoia, standing tall deeply-rooted unchanged through it all, but yet is constantly transforming like caterpillars-into-butterflies, crawling small earth-bound and then falling in trumpeting-call flights through the heavens with transcendent beauty?
1 day, 8 years ago, a dreamer from Alabama fell in with a dreamer from California.
Since then, many generations of caterpillars have transformed into butterflies. All the while the great sequoia has stood unchanged above it all.
It’s difficult when 2 dreamers fall in together, but it can last and it can grow.
What is that thing that’s constant like the sequoia and yet ever-changing like caterpillars into butterflies?
It’s the love these 2 dreamers share.
A dreamer from California fell in with a dreamer from Alabama, 8 years ago, today.
They fell in.
They fell in...
Love. I love you, Carlos from California.
–Mike from Alabama
Keep dreaming, Los Mariposa; keep dreaming, Love. We’ll get there 1 day. 1 day...
What do you think of my short list of 4 things? I know I need a fifth...
(All writing contained in this web log is COPYRIGHT 2010 Michael S. Adams.)
(Thinking about the small town where I grew up a student, especially after an ol' hometown pal, who's now a teacher there, took me to task for calling the town "backwoodsy,"...)
THE "CITY" WHERE I GREW UP
Butler, Alabama, a tiny town proclaimed the "City" of "Progress" by the billboards at the "city" limits, is a refuge from big-city chaos-go-go-go-90-all-the-time that I've lived in since the 90s; Butler is my Fortress of Solitude, if I may be so Super Bold and Brave. As much as I want to deride it and find fault with it, I find I can't too much. It's my old home.
I never say anything too bad about it. It would be so easy to scream, "Butler, Butler, Butler did it!" every time some suspicious character weakness from my past arises to shadow me; however, I tend to stay kinda' quiet, just like I did growing up in Butler. If I ever do come down on anything about Butler or anyone who was ever there, I do minimize the comment's negative nature by admitting my own fault for the way things were and are. I try not to play the blame game about where and when I was raised. I do feel I escaped, but not from Butler, more from the past and more from chains I allowed all towns and cities to place on me back there and back then.
That said, Butler is mega-backwoodsy compared to where I live now in Phoenix, Arizona; "backwoodsy" shouldn't have any power as a negative word though. I have taken my partner, San Diego city-boy Carlos, to Butler, but it was miserably hot and 100% humid in July of 2005, so he probably doesn't love Butler so much. Los didn't like the climate but was enchanted by the various graveyards (at least one off of a dirt road through the "backwoods") wherein are generations (several) of my ancestors and was entranced by the echo point out at the landing on the Tombigbee River. While he and I walked the riverbank over the rushing Tombigbee, while the echoes rang across it still, the cricket, frog, and cicada sounds kinda' cast a freaky spell on him.
Even while he was freaked, we didn't really give any Butler humans a chance to see our love in the form of any PDAs. My mom & dad had just met Los in person for the first time then; I wasn't going to push too many buttons too quickly. So, my long point is that I hope I didn't come across as not liking Butler and its verdant countryside; I do love it. Glad I'm away but happy for anyone who stayed. I LOVE to visit.
Butler means a lot to me--I grew much stronger from the bad I experienced there and continue to find joy in the good. I learned much there. Backwoods are places of quiet, rest, relaxation, getting back in touch with Mama's home cookin' and with Mother Nature.
Is Butler womb-y? Maybe it wasn't always back "then," but it is now, a place to gain some strength and then spring fully-formed back out into the world, all Athena-like. Wow, that makes Butler more Zeussy than womb-y. How do I paint myself into these wordy corners?
(After growing up in Butler and teaching for many years in Alabama, Japan, California, and Arizona, I turned a corner in life and moved on to another career. Recently, a teacher friend asked me if I missed teaching. My response about...)
AN OLD PROFESSION
In this great time of marriage debate, I must say to your question of "Do you miss teaching just a teeny little bit?" My answer is, "I DO... not! In good times and bad, in sickness and in (MENTAL) health, I DO not miss teaching."
Just 3 nights ago, I had yet ANOTHER nightmare wherein I was a teacher and all my students were all the unruly talkative, uncooperative, off-task people I've ever met in my life (most of whom weren't even my students in real life). The lesson got to the point where the students had to get quiet, some sort of test, but I just couldn't get them quiet.
The scene dream-shifted to a gigantic church. My dream-self then even said something like, "This is a test, and we're in the house of the Lord, you've got to get quiet." Still, loudness! LOUDNESS!!! What finally woke me up was realizing I was "teaching" former fellow students, grown-up acquaintances, etc., mixed in with some actual former students. My really-observant dream-self was, like, "Whoa, why are you all in my classroom...?"
RING--woke up from riding that nightmare across the fields of Phoenix. Now, I realize nightmares have more to do with what you ate for dinner and what you are processing in your own current life, but really I DO not miss teaching,...
...except for when I DO.
(I do; I don't. How about a new fictional character of mine--is she; isn't she? Introducing Nicola Pound,...)
A NEW CHARACTER
Iron Nick; she bruises easily. Peg her as a villain, then she does something heroic that is villainous in the end but is really heroic. Will she have difficulty with her nemesis Mister Magno--at first, you'd think so--but, nah, it's mostly easy for her with him, BUT, at the same time, it's really hard for her because of her secret-identity job as an Earth-core scientist alongside his and mainly due to her part-time job as a "criminal" attorney. "Isn't it Iron Nick? Don't you think."
Growing up in a town that forged her, into a profession that sharpened her, and through numerous loves and lost loves that both brightened and darkened her, a new superheroine slash supervillain slash superheroine slash supervillain steps forth.
She has too many unfortunate things happening in her life; but, interspersed with all the misfortune, there are also moments of mindbending twistiness that she furiously tries to unravel.
Her least favorite element is, you guessed it, iron. Her skin can be metallic one moment, bullets bouncing off her, but deep inside, you guessed it (OR DID YOU), severe iron deficiency. You'd think a planetary-core scientist would understand the mechanics of deep-dark caves and know which ones are safe from magma intrusions. Was it really just unfortunate that she lost her foster-daughter to death by unexpected magma intrusion there in the Iron Cave, or was it more? She is a paid vulcanologist, after all! Isn't it just Iron Nick? Don't you think...
(Amidst all our work and forging a future around all the corners of the farback past arises...)
A CONTINUING LOVE (or September 27, 2010)
What is that thing that is constant like the sequoia, standing tall deeply-rooted unchanged through it all, but yet is constantly transforming like caterpillars-into-butterflies, crawling small earth-bound and then falling in trumpeting-call flights through the heavens with transcendent beauty?
1 day, 8 years ago, a dreamer from Alabama fell in with a dreamer from California.
Since then, many generations of caterpillars have transformed into butterflies. All the while the great sequoia has stood unchanged above it all.
It’s difficult when 2 dreamers fall in together, but it can last and it can grow.
What is that thing that’s constant like the sequoia and yet ever-changing like caterpillars into butterflies?
It’s the love these 2 dreamers share.
A dreamer from California fell in with a dreamer from Alabama, 8 years ago, today.
They fell in.
They fell in...
Love. I love you, Carlos from California.
–Mike from Alabama
Keep dreaming, Los Mariposa; keep dreaming, Love. We’ll get there 1 day. 1 day...
What do you think of my short list of 4 things? I know I need a fifth...
(All writing contained in this web log is COPYRIGHT 2010 Michael S. Adams.)
Labels: butler alabama, butterfly, irony, jfk, sequoia, superhero, supervillain. love, teaching
posted by Mike @ 2:17 PM
1 Comments:
At December 9, 2010 at 12:24 PM ,
Marianne said...
I loved all four of your four things. Some made me sad, some made me smile and at least one made me laugh out loud. All made me proud to call you friend. xxx
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