31 May 2021 I Am Mike Wazowski

 

     In September, I scratched my cornea.

    It took me a day or two to see the doctor, as I can be ornery about things like that, but it finally got to be too much and I went in. He gave me some antibacterial drops and put a contact lens on my eye as a 'bandage' to keep it from getting irritated. It was a pretty frustrating week, but at least my eye wasn't constantly weeping. I was so miserable I swore I would use eye drops daily, not rub my eyes and never do this again.

    Last night, the same symptoms appeared and today I am typing with one eye, like Mike Wazowski, tears streaming down my face from my ONE EYE. I felt my eyes drying out while on our anniversary weekend and knew staying hydrated was key. So I chose to drink more alcohol. Because monkeys learn faster than I do. Last night my eye was very bothersome, and instead of using eye drops I grabbed a paper towel and rubbed it. Remembering my own stupidity caused the pain to escalate and I am now typing completely blind. Thank you Mrs. Horn, Dunstan Jr. High typing teacher who painted over the keys on the typewriters so we would look UP whilst typing, in preparation for a career of typing notes for our Taskmasters. Whenever I think of that class, I'm shocked at how very 1950's the whole experience was. Mathematically, it should have been about 1979. 

    So. I have the antibacterial eye drops from September still, but it's a holiday, so no luck getting in to get a nice contact bandage put on my eyeball. Just a day of complete misery ahead. I can't drive, I can't watch TV, I am literally typing with both eyes closed because the glow is too much. I'll go back to bed because this will prove to be too exhausting, and it's 6.51 am on Memorial day, why am I up, anyway?

    Well, I had to get up to scratch through the vanity like a raccoon on the scent of a marshmallow to locate the antibacterial drops. At least I knew I had them and I wanted them and my drawer is not very well organized, to say the least. I was throwing stuff into the slink at 5 am making quite a racket that Jim pretended he didn't hear. Pro Tip: If you hear kryssi unloading a drawer at 5 am, Do Not Engage. It's unlikely you have any idea where whatever it is she is trying to locate can be found, anyway. She's the one who knows where everything is, not you. Just go back to sleep, you've done quite enough.  Just accept that at some random point in the future, she will bring up the fact that nobody helps her do anything, and how come she is the only one who knows where things are, yet nobody will let her run their life  you people are exhausting! That will End Scene, and she will take a moment to change costumes and verbs, all before you're even awake.

    Scene.

Living Below the Dignity Line

 

    The summer of 2019, due to a drought of directing jobs, I decided to try other gigs. I drove for Lyft. I worked on the assembly line in a warehouse. I worked at King Soopers.

     The King Soopers was in my area. The manager told me that they struggle with theft, people steal single eggs from the cartons. So weird. But also,she said the homeless- a population that had recently traveled west to our suburb and was rapidly increasing- were becoming problematic within the store bathrooms. Nobody minded that they were using them, but they were not cleaning up after themselves, which was why they doubled their bathroom checks. The issue that struck me, though, was that a homeless person would lock themselves in the bathroom with a bottle they'd stolen from the liquor store. They would not answer when the door was knocked on, and some 16 year old clerk would have to break the door down and call 911.

    I have a friend who is a retired teacher, who worked last summer at the ACE Hardware in our neighborhood. She said the managers were constantly battling the homeless who were openly stealing from the store. She said there is a group of them that live in the ditch along Alameda Parkway.

   A Group of homeless, living in a ditch. Stealing single eggs.Leaving public bathrooms unusable for hours.

   All of these examples suggest human beings that are living below the dignity line. Not just poverty,not only financial. They've given up on any chance of feeling like they are human.

   I said this phrase outloud today for the first time, and I wanted to write it down. 

   That's all.

   Scene. 

Reason #28: I Am Waiting 13 May 2021

  I have used the Ferlinghetti "I Am Waiting' example in classes for years. The beauty is that you can rewrite it every few months, and it has a different tone. I wrote one in December, and this one was written in May. I performed it on the stage in front of about 15 audience members and a live feed. It is the first performance I have done live in years, and the evening was the first real 'Live' performance the high school stage has hosted in 14 months.

         I Am Waiting  with all of my love and apologies to Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Samuel Beckett.

 

12 MAY 2021

I am waiting for art and theatre and poetry to be revered

I am waiting for students to turn on their cameras

I am waiting for my pay to match my passion.

I am waiting for Broadway to open her eyes and yawn and ask what's been going on

I am waiting for the dog to self wash so he does not smell like a Frito

I am waiting for an apology

I am waiting for karma

I am waiting for a revolution of kindness

I am waiting for Christ to come down from his bare tree and end this absurdist cycle with a tip of his bowler and a magic turnip

I am waiting for Beckett and Ferlinghetti to smite me for invoking their genius in my silly poem.

I am waiting to follow Keanu and Dolly to the promised land

I am waiting to win a new coastal home from HGTV!

I am waiting for the revolution of kindness

I am waiting for my internet to reconnect

 I am waiting for Comcast to care that my internet won’t reconnect

I am waiting for the cats to get jobs and contribute to the household and I am waiting for my obsession with Schitt's Creek to cease

I am waiting for laughter.

I am waiting for Hamlet to kill Claudius already

And I am waiting for wait loss to be easy.

I am waiting for someone to care

I am waiting for the victory of decency

I am waiting to move forward, for the US to stop hovering like hurricane Harvey over Houston

I am still waiting for students to turn on their cameras

I am waiting to feel mentally stable

I am waiting for kindness

I am waiting for my hair to grow out

I am waiting for a haircut

I am waiting to be discovered or uncovered or recovered---

I am waiting to recover.

I am waiting for my groceries

I am waiting in the drive through because everybody quit will you please pay these people a living wage already, I’m Waiting.

I am waiting for the tribes to finally rise up and reclaim what is rightfully theirs and for Karen to stand down and relinquish what is not hers.

I am waiting for my favorite ancient shirt to disintegrate and fall off of my body as a metaphor

I am waiting for the brain fog to clear or the clear fog to brain and I can’t remember anybody’s name I am waiting to see clearly

And now you’re waiting for me to remember your name.

Thank you for your kindness.

Covid, Depression, Menopause or...?

 

  I have more than ten unfinished blogs. I refuse to let this be eleven, so it may not make any sense.

  There is a 14 minute video going around, probably Tik Tok, of a student walking into a classroom and greeting his teacher, who does not recognize him. Not just because of the mask, but because he is in person. The kid puts up a cardboard cutout of his google meet photo, which is just an alphabet letter, and the teacher recognizes him.

  I have had kids come in and had the same experience. A kid I knew briefly (remember I was only in the building for ten minutes before the shutdown) came in and started talking like he knew me. Not just the mask, but the fact that he was not in any of my classes contributed to me asking  if he was lost. "Are you sure I'm the one you want to talk to?" LIke he was unable to recognized me, for some reason that made sense in my head.In addition, he had grown about six inches since March of 20, so I was way off. He had to identify himself.

  This has happened enough that I don't need to recount every story. What's distressing, is that sometimes they identify themselves and I still have no idea who they are. I can't remember names.

  Jim has had projects all through the lockdowns, even though he's been able to go to work. He started with hurricane lamps in the summer and has moved onto digging out all of our closets. We now have an empty, painted closet that he told me last week I could use for whatever. I moved a few games into it from the other closet across the hall and then stopped. Until this moment, I had entirely forgotten about the empty closet. I forgot about a closet I walk past daily.

   For a week straight I was vigilant about working out for seven minutes when I arrived at school. I saw on facebook how it will transform my hideous shape if I just stick to a seven minute cardio workout every day. Then my school schedule changed and I stopped doing it. I could still find time, I just don't. I forgot about it.

   I have a grocery list that lives in the kitchen. Every week Harper orders the same groceries with some varition for pick up. If I don't write down a variation, like TIDE pods, it doesn't get ordered and I have to go to King Sooopers. Which is fine, but I get lost, I forget what I'm looking for and there is now a banner that says # BOULDER STRONG that I'm supposed to take comfort in, I guess, and feel safe shopping for whatever it is I don't know. All I know is that the sign is making whatever is wrong with me worse, and I can barely function in the store.

  My district has shattered the schedule,so instead of semesters or quarters, I am in Session number eight of eight, twenty day sessions. Each class is three hours long, two classes a day for twenty days each.  I've managed, somehow, to keep track of each class and plan daily, teaching theatre in a virtual space with a handful of kids in person sometimes or no kids in person, and yet I'm still evaluated as if this was a regular year. Showing grace to kids left and right, waiting for a bit of grace to be thrown my way. Like teaching in an empty theatre, it's absurist waiting for grace.

   I stepped in cat poop on the way out the door the other morning. The morning routine is pretty much all I'm clinging to at this juncture--today is 2 May, 2021, I've been online for over a year---and I threw the rug and my shoes and socks in the trash can by the garage,and got in the car to drive to school. I had to get back out of the car to get another pair of shoes. Once back in the car, I had to return to the house for socks.

  I carry three bags into school with me. My purse with my car key and wallet, the Door Dash insulated bag with our lunches, and my computer bag. On multiple occasions Harp has asked why I do not consolidate into one bag. I tried it one day, and we left the building ten minutes late becasue I had no idea what I had done with my car key. It was in the computer bag, in a zipper pocket. When I found it, I said outloud to Harper and the empty room "I said outloud, 'it's in the zipper pocket', now I remember." Harp just watched silently, waiting for my head to explode or my eyes to melt out of my skull.Instead I executed a quick time step. Her expression did not change.

  I park in the same place every morning. One time I parked in a different lot thinking I needed to be out of the way of food distribution, and couldn't find my car. It is bright green. It can be seen from space.

  I tried to join the staff choir, but it means altering the way I use my two hours between classes, and I can't seem to manage. All I have to do is eat lunch at 10:30  instead of 11, so I can go to choir at 11. I can't seem to make it work. Every day  at 10:30 I have to shut down the theatre, go to the bathroom, check turned in work for the am class, check planning for the pm class, open the Door Dash bag and get lunch set up for myself and Harper. I went to choir rehearsal twice and couldn't focus either time. I was not in the right place aat 11:15. I literally just left, shaking my head and when I got into the hallway I said outloud to myself "Wopner is on," and began to laugh manaically at a my own joke, hearing the sound bounce through the empty hallway back at me. 

  I was grateful to see some beloved former colleagues this Friday. We are all vaxxed and got to hug. I have no idea what I talked about, or if I made sense. All I know is that one suggested that I get therapy. So I got that going for me.

         Scene.