A Poor Wednesday

Here's what I did today, but not in chronological order:

• I tried to learn more about scratch-off tickets to write about them for whatever. Some of their names, which could be better, are below. 
• I did not write any new music reviews, or the zine reviews I promised myself I would start and finish and had even written in my head. 
• A cane plant Harish left at my apartment years ago had taken on some terrible plant sickness. It was biblical in filth and persistence. Scales, it is called. I felt shame when I learned this. I soaked paper towels in rubbing alcohol and scrubbed its big leaves clean. This took an hour. Brianna watched a good amount of King Pin. I think both of these things calmed me.
• Met up w/ Vicky to drop off her tripod and my microphone to continue the process of this movie we're making, Night of the Blood Zine.
• I graded 4 1/2 essays, which is good for me but bad for most teachers, I'd suspect. 
• Tried to read Beckett, briefly. Difficult and not affirming.
• Took out the dog and saw a rat sitting on the crown of our back gate. Felt like I was in a Joe Dante or John Carpenter movie. 
• Become unreasonably lost in the writing process (and in life, too) while trying to finish a letter of rec. Normally I feel purposeful and driven in this process. Today, I don't know. The paragraphs were hiding. 
• Thought, should I read more of Thomas' Under Milk Wood?
• Read Achebe's story "Civil Peace" in a fancy teacher version w/ vocab questions and bio facts.
• Felt light malaise. The high point of today was definitely grading the essays and cleaning the plant. 
• I have a regular journal, but this is somehow useful as well.  
• Scratch-off names:  Merry Millioniare, Carolyn Adams Ticket for the Cure, Candycane Crossword, Turkery Tripler, Holiday Cash, these next are poorly titled: Chicago Blackhawks, The Walking Dead, King’s Ransom. Red Ribbon Cash, Verteran’s Cash, Ticket for the Cure, MS Project, Special Olympics, Holiday Cash, $500 A Week for Life, Sprakling 7’s, 7-11-21, Loose Change, Five Times the Cash, 20 Years of Cash $1000 a Week (4.5 to 1 odds, average). $1,000 A Week For Life, Super 7-11-21, Red White and Blue Cash, Slots of Luck (4.2 to 1), Double Match, Break the Bank, 10X the Cash, Triple 777, Super $100 Frenzy, Aces and 8s, 20 Years Of Cash $2,000 A Week. $2,500 a Week For Life, $250,000 Payday, Cool Cash, Sizzlin 7s, Ca$h Money, Vegas, Bingo, $250 Grand, Super $500 Frenzy, Crossword, 20 Years Of Cash $5,000 A Week, $5,000 A Week For Life, World Class Millions, Golden Casino, Wild 10s, Blackout Bingo, 50x The Cash, $300,000,000 Cash Spectacular, $10 Million Cash Bonanza, $250,000 Crossword, 20 Years Of Cash $10,000 A Week, Fabulous Fortune, $250,000,000 Cash Spectacular, 20 X 20

Room 525

One of the funniest things about getting a little older, and really not even getting older at all, because what is 30, but about getting a career, is the way my vision has started to tighten like the doors of an elevator closing over a landscape, and that landscape is the hallway looking toward the high school's photocopy room. Though I do love that photocopier.

This thought coming after I sat down to finish an essay during my free period in a classroom where I’ve been teaching for a few years. And where three years ago I read a beautiful essay a student wrote about walking around the city and hopping fences. I'm supposed to be writing about suspense in nonfiction narratives and the surreal violence of one Russian's fiction, but I keep seeing his fences and red brick buildings. 

Still, very good that I have a career that lets me think of these things.