furballs

Sometimes love can twist your head--
But you don't have to wish me dead today--
We can ride away--

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This final week in Governor's School for the Humanities: we're studying essays on education from Newman, al-Ghazali, Friere, and Douglass . . . in addition to a critique of Friere that was recently published in some periodical-thingummy or another. This is the part of the term where they feel like their own experience carries some weight, and it's interesting to hear them talk about their schools. I remind them that their experience can't possibly be stranger than my own.

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I have been given the challenge: next time I'm at the lake (hoping there is a next time sometime this summer), I am to ski. It's been a while--I hope I remember, and I hope my body is able to withstand high-speed collisions with the water like it used to. Oh, and I decided it's time to give up my decade-old pairs of swim trunks (one actually dating to college) and get something a bit more, er, updated. Really--I looked pitiful. I'm also getting one of those silly "rashguard" shirts with SPF 750 or something built in; maybe that will cut down on the goop I have to put on. Maybe.

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We finished our selections from Paradise Lost in my other class last week . . . one student informed me that I could very well be a theology professor. I thanked him for his confidence in me, and inwardly guffawed at myself. Still, I think they got a lot out of it. Students don't often get the opportunity to think seriously about theology, casuistry, or any of the other assorted -ologies, and in many cases they relish the chance even if they don't necessarily belong to a church. This week: King Lear, then Donne & Jonson & Marvell.

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I have been following, albeit from a distance, the travails of Hayumbone, the Buzzard, and their families this past couple of weeks. And I'll tell you: I want them on my side when life takes a lead pipe to my knee. The Buzzard did a veritable Augean Stable of work, at considerable cost to himself (in every way). I may sometime hear the whole story with my own ears, but this again reminds me how fortunate I was to cross paths with him & Hayumbone when I did. It hasn't been the same since we've been apart, y'all. If you don't believe me, just ask my doctor.

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I've had a hard time thinking clearly all day. Unfortunately, can't blame it on the drugs anymore!

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Still jaded, skeptical, misbelieving, cynical . . . but maybe that will change one day.

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I missed my boys today.