a story of parts/ hard glittering & being taught

story with an inability to know anything precisely.
this is a story from general to specific about right now. i have been teaching. did you know i am a teacher? even though i don't know how to be one, and often i feel i don't know how to help students. many of my students have led extremely painful lives. i know many people have. but right now i feel the burden of my students' lives; i feel the heavyness of them. three of my students could not respond to the simply journal prompt of "describe a childhood memory" without crying halfway through. in the sense that they say something like "i can't finish this journal i'm crying now". childhoods full of abuse, shame, murders and violence, abandonment, no love. wars. disease. poverty. all that, you know. what do we do? here we are, hanging off each other's hands. what do we do?

i can't talk about this anymore not because i'm crying but because i don't know what else to say. feel too plaintive and exposed. how does everything connect?

love and empathy sometimes seem like drowning forces, though i know they're really good. this story is also about how i realized recently that finn didn't know i was a teacher. he knew i went to work but didn't know i was a teacher.

i have been grading. i have been falling asleep at the keyboard at one in the morning, grading and planning. i have been behind. dishes have stacked up. my life is there, precisely, in the middle of that stinking pile of dishes from tuesday through friday. now i sit here, bilberry and honey lotion rubbed into my feet (by me), friday night, showered, dishes done, blogging.

we went to a parade today! we have also done fun things recently like--visit the raptor center (where they care for injured birds, like owls, eagles, kestrels)with kid-friends annika and ellie.

i thought i'd include some pictures of me being a writing teacher. just to try to integrate, figure out how it's part of all this, this that i am. see it's a part!

finn has been crying out "i miss the sun, i miss the sun". . .on rainy days, and just when darkness hits so fast so quick at 6:30 now. . .

another part of my story right now is that my book of poems is going to be published! by rescue press! it doesn't seem real yet, seems unreal. i don't know what it means but it makes me happy! and now i feel free-er to concentrate on other poems, in some way. thank you!

lately i feel like i have the capacity to let things go, to exist, to just feel blessed (hopefully). blessed not in a blind, bland way. blessed in a hard diamond way, as in, i am learning this, and it is hard to learn this, but i am. i am being taught, recently. i feel teaching-ness all around: taught to let go, taught to not force things, taught to be resourceful and soak beans (simple), taught to be able to change, taught that things don't go according to plan, taught that one can scrape by in a very very close scrapey scrapey way and not die because of it (of course), taught so much about giving gifts; what giving means, and how it can expand things and also hurt things. i don't know. my head is swimming with learning. i hope i can get it all. i take notes by just sitting here. the bare beauty of what is, hopefully. mind-can, mind-cup, mind with major arteries, awake.