The Unexpected

First, a police officer showed up at the dorm because some kids have had some money go missing. So, of course, after some talk, we decided there was pretty much nothing to be done.

Second, I have not touched a graphing calculator in since calculus freshmen year of college. Leo asked for help in finding intersections on his new calculator; and I helped! It all just... came back to me. Miraculous. It made me feel something about math: I miss it.

More on Hyphens

I kid you not.

Same handout, different problem. I was talking about how with certain prefixes, we add a hyphen to avoid aberrations in the appearance of the word. I used the example "un-American."  Without the hyphen, we have a capital letter mid-word—"the horror of it all!" I said, "This should never happen in English." I said this dramatically, extemporaneously, as I often do in order to wake people up. I mean, it's not like science class where one might get away with threatening immediate danger to life and limb if students do not follow instructions. Honestly, petty annoyance resulting in the loss of a point for proper mechanics is my highest threat. Still, I feel they ought to know... But I should have given my dramatic "never" some extra thought. David took no time at all to respond, "You mean, like 'McKalips'?" Burn. I feebly tried to say that it was Irish, and therefore not applicable.

The Great Loss of Normal

Cityscapes so foreign,
rise and fall against the horizon,
like an alien heartbeat.



Being a stranger once makes you a stranger forever.
I once thought that I had only to get used to a place to understand that the way of life in that place was not strange. But I fear I will never again be used to a place, having been displaced once. I cannot take anything for granted. Seeing new ways of preparing vegetables does not make the new way seem "normal." It banishes "normal" forever. No new way of preparing vegetables will ever seem stranger than the first way I learned to prepare vegetables.


Things are moving forward. This school year is ending. And I have struggled through it, here in this old Pennsylvania city, where everything was new. As a slow-adjuster, I can even look at old things and see new things. This could be an endless source of anxiety for me, if I were not careful. And as we all know, I get overwhelmed with new situations and all their new expectations, and new shapes of door handles and placements of light switches, and new faces, and new languages. As all the new builds up, so could the anxiety: you simply cannot study all those things at once.

Perhaps, when I am old, I will sit near the window, and watch the world. I will watch closely. I will feel things slowly. I will grasp the dresser handle, and let it become the very definition of a handle. I will turn off the lights, and finally think long. I will have time there, in that quiet place, to let the walls fall away, blacked out, whited out, then rebuilt into reality. And I will reclaim normal from the slowness.

But no, that's wrong. Life does not slow down to a snail's pace as we age. It speeds up. All I will have time for will be to think long about the dustiness of the windowsill. Then it will be bedtime, and I'll have to lay me down for the fatigue of that long thinking. And maybe I'll remember how, long ago, when I was perhaps just in high school, normal left forever. Who knows when it fell away? When did the floorboards rock and splinter, and finally give way?

C.S. Lewis said, in Surprised by Joy, "it was all sea and islands now, the great continent had sunk like Atlantis." He was speaking of the death of his mother. I suppose my great loss of normal must either be my brother leaving, or my mother remarrying, or going abroad for six months. Whenever it was, whatever shook my normal, I'm grateful. In place of the normal, I can have anxiety about the new, or faith in the God of all. To Him, we are not strangers.

February Forgotten

I just read a journal entry from camp last summer. I was expressing my frustration with a camper in my cabin. Mara had an appointment and had to leave camp for a few hours on Wednesday afternoon. Wednesday is always the hardest day, because it's the middle of the week, and we have the most activities that day, including camp-out. She had been homesick all week, crying at intervals, trying to participate occasionally, but she simply couldn't rise above it for more than an hour or two.

She left with her mother for the appointment on Wednesday afternoon. Just as I anticipated, in the evening her mother came back to pick up her things, announcing that Mara was finished for the week. Mara stayed in the car while her mother collected her sleeping bag and toothbrush and bathing suit. I was so frustrated with her mother: this is a classic case of enabling. She was giving her an out instead of telling her how strong she was, that she could certainly do this. Now the girl would have to wait until later to discover her own strength.

Let me bring this together: February of this year was my Wednesday. If I had had an out, I would have taken it: a different job, a vacation to Luxembourg. I found myself telling God that he needed to DO something. I felt so hopeless, purposeless, and TIRED. I wrote this poem then:

We forget

The end of February:
the slack damp girds our hearts;
we forget why we came.

We wait
with bated breath.
If your grace does not provide,
We shall have no recourse but to dive out, very far, for hope.

Today, we're undeniably into March. The sun is shining, and I placed a hyacinth in the open window of the office. There it is. February seems like a lifetime away. I know it is God who does this. He doesn't usually pick us up and take us home mid-week, despite our tears and threats. Perhaps merely "February" is a sissy example. Let me assure you, I've been through harder times... But it's not about the superlative nature of a trial. It's about Thursday, after camp-out, when you get a midday nap, and realize how lovely the woods are today, and you're ready to run hard during the evening games.

March, bring it.

Let the Wind Blow

What is it about writing that is so personal? Writing is good if it's true. You cannot hide and expect to be liked, or even understood. People are always reading past what you write: they are asking if your writing is a proper mirror for themselves. And they usually know themselves pretty well. It's late. My cough continues. I consider it a personal accomplishment to have done laundry and paid some loans today. I mean, worthy of a plaque, a medal.

The weather was so beautiful today, that I took my blanket and some grading to the park. After the grading, I turned up my hood, curled up in the blanket, and let the wind whip across me. I lay on that hill and fell asleep. I awoke a few times to see the bare trees against a gray and blue-streaked sky. I felt invisible. I felt beautiful.