Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Back To Mundania 

Check-ups and dentist appointments. Solo shopping while the kids nap. A bit of cleaructting in the yard: the big pines raised to make room for firewood stacks, the forsythia cut back from the bulhead. Far too much time on the Better Homes and Gardens arrange-a-deck software, dreaming of next summer.

In the evening, feeling fed up and cooped up, with no planned direction we follow a rumor, discover Fenders, a drive-in burger and ice cream joint by the shores of Holland Lake. Willow asks the ride the mechanical horse. Cassia holds out her hand, begs for quarters. Waterskiers fly by across the busy vacation road, their laughter drowned by the buzz of their towboats.

On the way home I stop suddenly at the dam runoff, remembering fishing gear still in our trunk. Cassia and Darcie walk home; Willow and I drag the bottom for hours, until it gets too dark to see our own lines. The weather is fine, the company sweet and grateful for the attention. Willow learns to cast, hits fifteen feet out on the nose. We catch nothing, and care not.

The curious suspension between summer and school year is much as it ever was. The back of the brain tickles with the rowing awareness that, soon, the world will expect things of you again. Each moment becomes overwrought with portent; soon, faint deperation will begin to flavor the minutes.

It's probably true of all teachers: in Fall we lose the ability to become one with the universe, lean into the system instead, like stepping onto a moving sidewalk, teeter for a moment, get our bearings, ride ever onwards.

It's a different life, this coming electrical storm, one no less fulfilling and full for what it is. The worklife is so western, so absent of Zen: I love it when I'm there, and in the groove...but I don't always love the me that lives there, if you know what I mean.

posted by boyhowdy | 10:59 PM |

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Comments:

Do you see any beauty in the mundane?

# posted by  Shaw Israel Izikson : 11:47 PM, August 15, 2006

 

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