I notice that November is difficult again. It was always October I dreaded the most but now November has grown heavier somehow. Of course it has everything to do with falling back into early darkness; we love that extra hour when we fill it with unpaid sleep debt. We love it for 23 hours until we note that it’s mid-afternoon and it feels like bedtime. November has been a month of dreams and I wonder why so many dreams, so many dreams. Unsettled souls, mostly mine perhaps. I should like to tell my dreams to A, who is the Jungian therapist in our group. But that would be boundary crossing, and you know how excellent I am at maintaining my boundaries.
On Saturday I will be teaching all day, and I haven’t gotten comfortable with teaching adults yet. I don’t know if I can get comfortable with it. It feels arrogant somehow, to pretend I know more than they do when we don’t know if that’s true at all. I always anticipate students (like myself) who aren’t so sure this teacher knows anything about anything. Teaching teenagers is different, because they’re easy to predict and easy to beat to the punch(line). In a roomful of teenagers I am sharp and hilarious. With adults I am nervous. And I don’t know if they think I’m funny or if they think I am a psychopath. Today when I designed a template for their research paper, I wrote in the “diagnosis” section that they should describe the symptomology and treatment, but acknowledge that they (we) are not qualified to diagnose. Or perform certain treatments, like prescribing medication. Or performing frontal lobotomies. Or exorcisms. … and then I stopped typing and asked myself if this was at all appropriate. And couldn’t be sure in the least, so I left it like that. But I am wondering if someone will be offended. Also, I wonder if students will actually read the template. I may be modeling myself after my advisor, Dr. Jo, who is clearly nuts, and who said, “Goodbye, goodbye, have a nice life” as if we weren’t going to be seeing each other again in a week. Crazy Jo who concluded the meeting before that one by asking, “May I please be excused?”
2 comments:
This is Saturday too.
It's too cold for my feet. And my limbs are twitchy. They are often twitchy these days.
Maybe it was a twitchy, cold Saturday when we last spoke. I can't quite remember what we said, but I know we were sad.
That was a good few years back. But I think of you often. I think of you with love. I still marvel at your writing and your kindness. And your ability to make me giggle.
Saturdays roll by. I can't help but feel there is too much sad in the world not to tell a person they are loved, still, and have been all through the gaps in between.
And so love, from here, 'curled under a blanket waiting for sound'. XX
I hope I didn’t make you sad, but I think I did. And making you sad made me sad. And mad (at myself, not at you, though those two things might not be indistinguishable). It’s cold here too, and drafty because my house is old. But I prefer being under the blanket, cold, than being warm without it. Temperature has an impact on my mood. I hope good things for you. And I send you my love too. xx
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