Student Responses

There was about a month of this academic year where I was considering applying for Teach for America next year. I think, at this point, I've decided against it, but after tons of research I stumbled across this great blog from a corps member in Arkansas, which I've been reading and loving all year. She's so positive and real about her experience. One of her recent entries was a post about her students' last essays, which was lovely and uplifting.

This is my equivalent of that. These come from a difficult class. When I first met these kids the majority of them were absolutely silent and did not understand a word that came from my mouth. The fact that they can now string together even semi-coherent thoughts in English is awesome. I didn't like the material I had to work with in this class, and I don't think I really had any influence on their progress, but I'm proud of them all the same. There were some other responses that were almost flawless in terms of grammar and content, which made my heart swell up, but here are a few that made me laugh out loud. They're adorable and completely verbatim.

Give the definition of “boastful.”

--Boastful it’s like arrogant.

--It means that a person loves himself and tells it to everybody; a person who boasts.

Do you think there is any crime for which the death penalty is the right punishment?

--I think no, deat penalty is not a good way to punish someone if the state kill someone, the state should be punished! Or not!? [I love the punctuation so much.]

--No, I don’t think so. Because to kill someone isn’t right but I can’t judge you and I can’t decide if you should to die or not. Maybe, if I kill you because of your crime I became a criminal too. And so I’ll be judge and it will became a circle where everybody will be a criminal!

--Yes, when you kill many people for not many reasons.

What are some qualities (in general) of extreme sports?

--Extreme sports are sport where you feel adrenaline and people likes extreme sports because you can die, and someone likes to be “free” jumping from a bridge. ["People like extreme sports because you can die," hahaha!]

--Extreme sports are very dangerous because you can be dead to do these.

Name and describe two extreme sports from the article.

--Surfing is a sport where you are on a table and you have “run” on the waves. [See, this is funny, but you can see that she gets the structure. She might not have the vocabulary, but she's getting it and she's trying. This one made me so happy.]

--Bunjee jumping is an extreme sport where people jump from a tower attacked by an elastic cord. [Same issue as the previous. And "attacked by an elastic cord" is just a great image.]

What is a “scar?”

--Scar is a mark on your skin when someone stabbed you or when a shark attacked you after, if you survive, you have a scar or after an operation. [Stabbing to shark attack. Awesome.]

--It’s a track on the skin provocated by a weapon such as a knife.

The family continued to chant 'speech speech speech' for no one in particular

I keep trying to write an update. I just deleted eight unfinished posts that were hanging around my dashboard. It's kind of like my life now - unfinished books, unwashed dishes, unironed clothes. I don't like Blogger's new look. I don't want to know how many people visit this page (or how many people don't). That's not why I write here, but it still embarrasses me a bit to see a counter. Is there a way to remove that feature, I wonder?

My head is up in space right now. It's Sunday and I'm still thinking about Friday. Friday, I had a long day. Friday's always my longest day. I start at eight, teach until one, then have a test prep class from two to four. It was so hot. It must have been in the eighties, though I never know what the temperature is anymore. Everyone was red-faced, a little sweaty, the classrooms reeking of body odor. Me too. The windows are open and there are moments when the kids are not listening to me at all, turning their faces outside to something or to nothing at all. White stuff floats in from outside and drifts around the classrooms. Pioppo, they call it, which I guess means poplar. I don't know what a poplar tree looks like.

In my last class that day, a class that is one of the best, I worked together with their normal teacher. We did a practice version of an English certification test they're all taking in a few weeks. It made me sad. These kids who are usually so articulate, whose English usually blows me away, were stumbling, tripping, flustered. I wondered if I should have been more stern with them, less casual, more rigid, structured. If I had underserved them, if a less casual environment would have prepared them better for this. It was tedious work, talking about banalities and describing pictures. I know it's different when there's a professor and a native speaker in your face, with a timer and a grade on the line, but I still watched them get embarrassed and struggle and I wondered if I could have done better for them.

The kids filed out when it was over. The door closed. The teacher I was working with made sure they were all gone, then turned to me, wrung her hands and said, "I shouldn't have asked that girl about her parents. They're divorced. I knew they were divorced." She then told me about all the tragedies in the lives of the students of this particular class: family deaths, money problems, divorces, illnesses, things I had known nothing about. My mind immediately went spinning, reeling through everything I remembered ever saying to them. Had I ever offended them without intending to? I had an incident earlier in the week where I said something - not out of malice, with no intention of doing anything other than fostering discussion, of getting them to speak - that bothered a student, enough that she asked to leave for a minute. The fact that I had said something innocuously which had struck so badly, it stuck with me all day. I was sick to my stomach all day. In the following class, the kids were not responding. Neither was I. My head was in the previous hour. Everything the kids were saying to me was one word, no elaboration, basta, non lo so. I wasn't pushing hard. I kept sighing. After the lesson, two girls, the best in the class and some of the best that I have, came to me and said, "We're sorry. We know we're horrible." I wanted to grab them and say no no no. I wanted to say that I think they're incredible, all of them, every single one. One of these girls wrote an album review of the Killers' Hot Fuss which left me grinning like an idiot alone in my apartment, it was so good. You would have thought an English-speaker had written it. I have almost nothing to do with these kids' success and I'm still so proud of them. But it's hard to be a teacher, even in a supporting role, when you're not sure of your own worth. You always feel like you're letting them down. I have no idea what their perception of me or my time with them is. They laugh with me, we joke around, they speak, which I think is important, but I don't know how much it's worth. But have they learned one iota from me? Has my presence been valuable to them in any way? And to know that I made a girl feel bad is a horrible feeling. "We have to be sensitive," that teacher told me after that Friday. I have no idea if she knows about my incident. The timing was good and I'm paranoid, so I suspect yes. But whether she did or not, I wanted to scream, "I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW." That is a lesson I've learned. I will take it home in its sad little box. I have been so wrapped up in me me me; who KNOWS what is going on with all these other beautiful people who occupy the world with me?

But then, the same day, a girl came up to me after another class. She was clearly trying not to make a big deal of it. She handed me a paperback and said, "I read this in Spanish. I liked it. It should be okay in English. I think you will like it." It's The Shadow of the Wind. I have barely started it and I already love it. A momentary salve for all the badness I felt that day. It seems, from the beginning, that it's about a love of books, of reading. I know about that. I do.

The test prep class went okay on Friday. I'm always a little anxious there. It's mostly composed of my own students, but there are six or so from the classico classes who I don't know. They sit off to the side, while my students sit right in front, and I always feel like I'm ignoring them because of that. It was so hot, pioppo rolling around like giddy tumbleweed. A reading that should have taken thirty minutes took more than an hour. I walked home feeling good and bad, blasting Kanye, made a peanut butter sandwich. I sat on my bed and had just enough time to think that I had less than three weeks left before I passed out. I woke up at 11 PM, stunned at the time, then went back to sleep.

I have two friends who worked in the same program as I do, but at the technical school across town. They finished their internship last week and went home. I was sad, really sad, and surprised by that. Those two girls have helped me keep perspective this year. Almost every weekend we'd get some wine, one of them would make her mother's Sri Lankan food, the other would throw on some Bruce (a true New Jersey native), and we'd shoot the shit about the week. I'd say things like, "Man, I did an article about Alan Greenspan and the economic crisis with my classes today, and they really didn't respond." They'd be silent, clear their throats. Then one would say something like, "I did a word search with my classes today." They kept me grounded that way. They're coming back for another year. I am not. It's weird to think of this place going on without me, but that's just me putting myself at the center of everything again. Of course it'll go on. But still... some of my classes have expressed sadness that I won't be back. One, this week... a lot of them groaned and sighed when I said no, there would be someone new. It was a shock. I have written multiple times in my paper journal: this class hates me. There was one particular lesson which I based around something sort of important to me. They didn't know that, and they were silent, or, if not, they snickered. I went home crushed. And THAT class, they're sad I'm leaving? I keep having these moments of speechlessness. It's gratifying and humbling and it makes my heart melt to think that even one person here will miss me when I get on that plane. But it's not important. What's important is that I've served them well. And that? I don't know. How can I ever know?

I tried to write a cover letter today for a temp job as a proofreader in Boston for a textbook company. I tried to squeeze out the words for something tangible that I've wrung from this experience. I couldn't do it. I had to stop and go for a walk, go and think. It's been more than a line on my resume. There are skills, I guess. I can stand in front of room full of people now and not feel embarrassed. I can command attention, I suppose. I can improvise, think on my feet, make things out of nothing, explain myself over and over so much that I feel like I'm bending backwards. I can bring energy, I can take the temperature of a group and adjust my own behavior accordingly. But it's more than all that. It has been hard hard hard, to feel like I'm at rock bottom - or at least as close to rock bottom as I've ever been - to feel, for perhaps the first time, that I'm really not good at something, to feel like I'm failing and letting people down and not doing a good job. To feel trapped with nowhere to go and no way to run. To live in a place where no one knows me or likes me or understands me. That's been the amazing thing, though, because when I DID do well, when I DID connect? Nothing better. Nothing more freeing. And for the first time, I've learned that I do enjoy my own company. I've been alone a lot the past eight months, to the point of distress. But when I stumble in and out of that, I realize that I do like myself. I like my interests, I like what I believe in, what I stand for, what I've done and what I do and how I treat myself and others and the world. I'm not perfect. There are things that I want to do better. But this Ian, existing in this moment? He's not such a bad guy. I've spent a lot of time with him, so I know.

But trying to put that into a cover letter? For a temp job? Dear textbook company, I've been through a crucible. I've frozen and melted. I'm coming out whole and happier. How's that?

I have fourteen days of classes left. It is insane to think. My brother's high school graduation is June 1, and barring disaster I will be there. There's so much to do. I have to cancel my internet, cancel my gym membership, square my bank account away, visit friends, plan lessons, go to places and say my goodbyes to people and things that I have really come to care about. It's terrifying and wonderful to say goodbye. I have been slashing Xs across my calendar for months, but now that it's here I don't know what to feel. I'm going home, where no one really knows what's been going on with me, the people I've met, the town I've been in, the places I've seen or the things that I've done. It's okay. I know how that feels, hard as it is. I'll just keep the good stuff close to my heart. The bad stuff, I will turn it over and over, sucking out anything I can, to learn from it.

The future is a big open space. That's scary. But it's a space I can fill in. Until then, I've got a book to finish.

RIP Alexander Dale Oen

Tragic news in swimming today: Olympic silver medalist and last year's world champion in the 100 m breaststroke, Alexander Dale Oen, of Norway, passed away yesterday at a training camp in Arizona, apparently of cardiac arrest.

Dale Oen set the fastest time ever in a textile suit last year over 100 meters, clocking in at 58.71. He was arguably the favorite for gold in that event in London this summer and was looking to chase the rubbersuit record of 58.58.

His swim last year was one of the highlights of the championships, as it came just days after the massacre in his home country. Dale Oen gave everyone in Norway something to cheer about in the wake of that tragedy. Truly a special, beautiful win. A tragic loss.

Thirsty for the street milk

--Dublin was awesome. It was great to see my mom and my brother. I drank real Guinness, saw some of the places where Ulysses took place (yeah, nerd points to Ian!), saw the Book of Kells and that phenomenal library. I also saw The Hunger Games twice (and, frankly, cried like a little girl both times; the girl who played Prim, her voice when Katniss was being taken away, was a killer). I ate way too much way too often, rode a lot of buses where people shouted things in Irish which sounded beautiful and things in English which were horrible and hilarious. I saw a lot of Irish people who looked freakishly like people I know back in Massachusetts. Lots of double-takes. I took real showers and tasted salt-flavored ice cream, which did my soul good. As did western Ireland. I left my little nature-deprived Italian town to go to this:


Much needed! That is me and my brother on the Cliffs of Moher. Hurt to leave. Wild and scary and beautiful.

--These are all absolutely true.

--Teaching fun:

1. The way my job works is that I have a schedule of 18 classes. One week I take half of one class and do a conversation lesson. The second week I take the other half and do the same lesson. From my egocentric perspective this is sometimes very annoying for me. I have to fake the same conversation twice to hit points, vocabulary, and concepts that I need/want to hit.

However, sometimes it goes in wildly divergent directions. For example, the last two weeks, when, with the first group, an article about gun control prompted a beautiful discussion which touched on everything from culpability in acts of self-defense to how the differences between the Italian and American education systems affect bullying and student relationships. My mind was blown. Not only are these teenagers talking about this stuff, but they are talking in a foreign language. I really am so proud of them, even though so very little of their skill has anything to do with me. But then there was today, the second group of the same class, in which the high point of the hour-long lesson was an anecdote about the time my cousin shot an arrow through my neighbors' pool and drained it. I think I also made America sound like a nation of crazies where school shootings happen regularly and anyone can go to Wal-Mart and get a gun.

2. In a second year class, on a chapter about the uses of the internet. (This textbook kills me. It's like they deliberately chose boring stuff for me to work with.)

"And what is an auction site?"
"Where you buy things."
"What kind of things?"
"Children."
"Children?"
"And houses."

3. I have a student whose last name translates, literally, to "big house." I call him Big House. He is a great sport about it and fantastic at English. There was a unit on the parts of the house. He, naturally, became the focal point of the lesson, especially when I learned that he really lives in a big house. The whole class joined in on it. "Big House, at your big house, do you have a garage? Where in your big house do you feel most comfortable, Big House?" They were so funny without ever becoming mean. I love that group. I'm going to miss them when this is over.

4. In a fourth year class, there was a lesson about the environment. I love this group but they were just not having it that day, so I resorted to a tactic which I like to think of as "provocation," basically disagreeing with everything they say just to force them to respond. Eventually we somehow got on the topic of orangutan extinction. (I know, right? This is what happens when you put me in charge of a classroom.) I stood there shrugging, like, "All the orangutans can die. I don't care, what does it matter to me?" We finished the lesson, moved on, whatever. Then, this week, I entered, made the usual how-are-yous. After a weird moment of silence, they all looked at each other. Then one boy raised his hand and said, "Ian, about the orangutans... do you really not care if they die?" (The truth is no. I love them.)

5. In another class, the same unit about the environment led to talking about gas prices. When the bell rang, a kid told me he had to leave fast to get his scooter and "make gas on it."

6. Apparently there is a different word for "eggplant" in England. I did not know this and I got into a really circular discussion with one class about it. It went like this:

"Melanzana."
"Eggplant?"
"Aubergine."
"What?"
"Melanzana."
"You mean eggplant?"
"Aubergine."
"What?"

--Teaching not fun:

1. I have one professor who makes me teach from these horrible "teenager magazines." I could do a whole post on these things. They are all from circa-1999, so every article is outdated. They discuss people who do not exist anymore, events which no one remembers. (Mia Hamm? JoJo? Josh Hartnett?) Not to mention the topics are ABSURD. I did one today called (wait for it): "STABBED... AT SCHOOL!" There was another which I was tempted to do, simply for my own amusement, called "Kelis: How She Climbed to the Top of the Music World." (You remember Kelis, right? That huge music superstar of 2012?) I might actually take a few of these magazines home with me. They are hilarious out of context. But when you try to make a lesson around them they are a nightmare. The students in these classes hate them and hate me for them. I do not blame them for one second.

Anyway, I have been photocopying from these magazines for, what, seven months? I went to the photocopy people - another whole post, full of rage and frustration - and, suddenly, in mid-April, photocopying from published texts is against the rules. Without explanation. "Why is it against the rules?" I asked photocopy man. I raised my eyebrow and tilted my head in a way that tried to indicate how stupid I thought this was without saying so. "It's on the sign," photocopy man answered. He pointed at the sign, which was updated in pen and highlighter. That is the only necessary answer. Essentially it is against the rules because they don't want to do it. "But today we can do one," he said, like he was doing me a favor. Oh, yes, thank you sir. One single photocopy will really help out my class of fifteen students. As if the writer of "STABBED... AT SCHOOL!" is gonna come running to my class over copyright infringement.

2. My attempts at sarcastic burns to unruly students never work because the students don't understand them. I used one on Monday that I thought was particularly good, and the girl simply looked at me, turned to the student next to her, and said, "Non ho capito." So I go home and soothe myself with the thought that, "She would have been embarrassed if she had gotten it."

3. One of my students had the words "nigger dick" scrawled on his notebook, complete with illustration. I stopped what we were doing to try to explain why that is not funny and how derogatory that term really is. I know I was not successful. Or successful enough. I tolerate a degree of English swearing because it lightens the mood, but stuff like that, no way. Faggot, nigger, bitch, anything directed at a person or a group. No no no. But they don't understand how bad those words are, because they aren't their words.

--I just cannot move through Crime and Punishment. I'm trying so hard and I want to get through it so badly because it's Important! Literature! but I am really struggling with this one.

--Coming back from Dublin really drove home that this is almost over. I saw my landlord and landlady today and we talked about how I would be getting to the airport to go home. What? What?! I have started to think in lists and inventories. What have I accomplished while I was here? What do I still need to do? What will I throw away when I go home? (That's my favorite line of thought. I don't know why.) What will be the first things I do when I get home? What do I absolutely need to buy to replace the things I've broken in this apartment?

--Actually, I've been stressing so much about the future that I got physically sick this week. I'm like a Jane Austen heroine. A minimal level of distress gives me headaches and I flee to my bed for days of tossing and turning in complete darkness. But really. This week I felt like someone was wringing my brain. I wake up in the night over this. It's like last year, at the end of college, but worse, because I don't have the possibility of a free year in Italy dangling out there. My internet situation and location make applications kind of hard. Plus, the only things I KNOW I want for my life for sure are just so... stupid. I want a fish tank. I want to join a Masters swim team. I want to volunteer at a dog shelter. That is all I have to go on. These are the feeble threads from which I must weave the tapestry of my life!

--I do want to teach. I do. Where? How? In what capacity? I don't know. But I think I've done a pretty good job for an untrained first-year teacher, and it really has been unbelievably good for me, on so many levels. I'm not the same person I was when I got on that plane in September. And I want to get better.

--The fish tank is so happening, though. I had a glorious fish tank through middle and high school which I had to disassemble when I went to college, due to the distance between us and the resulting neglect. But that tank is COMING BACK.

Books: A Visit from the Goon Squad

An anecdote, before I start. I don't own an e-reader and I don't care about that debate. You want one? Fine. Great. Get one. I don't. Let's leave it at that. But I am already mourning the day when that will be our ONLY option, when book-buying has no human component. I started Crime and Punishment on my way to Dublin, but by the time I got there I was exhausted and wanted something else. I had an afternoon to myself before my mom and brother got there, so I walked to a shopping mall nearby and went to the bookstore. I had heard the title of this book somewhere and the cover caught my eye, so I bought it. I had the loveliest conversation with the Irish girl at the checkout. She had the look of a huge nerd and I loved her on sight. She rang me up, then murmured, "This one, she's a good writer." And we talked about it, holding up the line while she told me what she'd liked about it, which characters and chapters. She heard my accent and asked me a point about the USA that she didn't get. I love that. I do not have enough of that in my life. I don't want that to go away. I actually went back another night to buy another Egan book, but alas, my nerdy Irish checkout girl wasn't working.

Anyway. This is technically classified as a novel, but it's not, really. It's a series of short stories which feature several of the same characters in different phases of their lives. It's a pretty clever device. The order is not chronological, which, at times, made it a bit hard to get my bearings, but once I figured out where we were, relatively, in each character's life - or, better, where this new narrator fit in the life of a previous character - I got to marvel a little at what Egan had done here.

Take, for instance, the opening chapter, which is from the point of view of Sasha, one of the major figures who rolls through the book. In the opener, Sasha is young, dating a guy named Alex. She knows the relationship is going nowhere, to the point that she is already wondering how they will remember each other when they split. She's over it. What she's really wrestling with is another issue: kleptomania. She compulsively steals things - wallets, pens, anything - and keeps them like trophies on a desk in her apartment. She meets with a therapist, but she feels like she's only telling him what he wants to hear. She goes into a bathroom and steals a wallet from a purse in the next stall over, but she fumbles the situation and awkwardly gives it back. The chapter ends with the sense that Sasha is a mess and may not ever get better.

But then we move to Bennie, Sasha's boss. He's high up in the music industry (at this point; he pops up in several chapters, too) and Sasha is his assistant. To him (for now) she is reliable, capable, knowing. She is a comfort. There are hints of her kleptomania, but without the previous chapter they would be unrecognizable. Then, later, we see Sasha through a tormented college boyfriend who loved her even though she basically used him to give her father the impression of her own stability. (That chapter, I must say, was particularly devastating, and when Egan revealed what happened to the boyfriend in another chapter, I actually felt a little pang of grief.) Then again we see her through her children in her later years, then through the eyes of her uncle as he chases her through Naples in her wilder days. It's a fascinating investigation into the difference between self-perception of outward perception of ourselves. The same character seen through different filters almost becomes someone else. It's also a great way to mix up the life-to-death or beginning-to-end character development of a standard novel. When you're thrust into the head of a klepto, you wonder how she got that way. Then you shuffle backward and see: oh, maybe this is how. Then you shuffle forward and see where she might be going. But it's not a cut-and-dry deal. Egan avoids an easy answer, because it's all filtered through someone else's eyes. YOU know that what you're looking at isn't the same as what the narrator is seeing, but that's already because you've seen through another set of eyes. It's totally subjective but also totally real.

Unfortunately I finished the book in Dublin and sent it back to America with my brother (I have no space for anything!) so I can't excerpt some of her truly great writing. I hesitate to compare her to someone like George Eliot or Lorrie Moore because those are such heavy laurels - and because I don't think she's quite at that level - but she does have a bit of the same keen, distant perception of the human race. There were metaphors and observations that made me murmur, "Yeah, that's exactly right." I love writing that does that.

She won the Pulitzer for this last year. (Yeah, where have I been?) I loved this comment in an interview:

Anyone can say anything, that’s easy. My focus is less on the need for women to trumpet their own achievements than to shoot high and achieve a lot. What I want to see is young, ambitious writers. And there are tons of them. Look at “The Tiger’s Wife.” There was that scandal with the Harvard student who was found to have plagiarized. But she had plagiarized very derivative, banal stuff. This is your big first move? These are your models? I’m not saying you should say you’ve never done anything good, but I don’t go around saying I’ve written the book of the century. My advice for young female writers would be to shoot high and not cower.

"Shoot high and not cower." I think we could all use a little of that.

Loved this book, and I'm almost finished her short story collection, which isn't bad either. I've found a new writer to follow.

Tonight, tonight, the highway's bright

--Two days and the week is over. I was a little miffed early on in the year thinking about this break - what's the point in starting vacation on a WEDNESDAY? - but I forgot how wonderful it feels to walk home feeling the sensation of Friday but knowing it's only TUESDAY. Nice day, too. Overcast, not too hot or cold. Nice weather to walk around in. It's been way too hot here.

Teaching was okay. I was already mentally existing in Wednesday, so I phoned it in for the last two days. Not proud of that, but it happens. I played games in my extra lessons, which I always stress about. The students like it, but I always wring my hands a little, like we should be doing something important! Did another lecture about American government which was met with, if possible, an even more unenthusiastic response. A sudden thought occurred to me in the middle of it about the dangers of choosing the Vice President in order to attract more voters, and I went off on a tangent before one girl stopped me and said, "But where is this on the handout?" Heh. Not there, pal.

--Federico update: one day he walked by me and saluted me with, "Ciao amico!" Then he stopped, said, "Hell-o-o-o," giggled, and turned to his helper with the explanatory, "Lui è inglese." Almost correct. But the next day he passed me in the hall and screamed "TUA MADRE" at me. I don't know what to make of any of this.

--Barring disaster with the transportation system and my own idiocy, I should be relaxing in Dublin by this time tomorrow night. I am not one to use the word "deserve." It is my least favorite word. I do not "deserve" a vacation by any means, but God am I excited. To see Dublin, yes, but just to sleep in a hotel bed (which does not come out of the wall like a half-made coffin) and shower in an adult-sized bathtub and eat food that is cooked by someone else. Something about hotels is particularly relaxing to me, and I've been run ragged lately. A bit, anyway. My mom and my brother are meeting me on Thursday, too. Should be a good week. I have missed them so much. Also, I'm in walking distance from a movie theater. My mother wants to read the Hunger Games on the plane and maybe see the movie some night this week, but I might wander over tomorrow and do it alone. I suspect I'll want to see it more than once.

--I think, overall, I've adapted to the carefree Italian lifestyle. In some ways. It doesn't bother me so much anymore that the supermarket which says it will be open on Sundays is sometimes just... not, inexplicably. I have accepted that the post office and the check-out line and the police station will sometimes take four times longer than they should. I'm pretty okay with the fact that classes will be canceled and moved around without anyone ever telling me when or why or where; it's even okay when I show up at 9 AM to school to find out, with each passing hour, that my next lesson is a no-show, until, by one o'clock, my ENTIRE DAY of lessons has been canceled and I have been waiting all day for nothing. But the one thing that I cannot adjust to is my paycheck. It still seems absurd to me that a paycheck released to the bank on the 25th of one month will be processed and available to me at some indefinite point within the first ten days of the next month. This is my livelihood! I'm hungry! I need to buy things! What is taking so long?

--The English pronunciation of the letter "r" is horrible when speaking Italian, but the Italian pronunciation of it is awesome in English. My students say certain words and their tongues roll so much you can almost see the sound waves. I had a kid say "roaring" the other day and I asked him to repeat it.

--I cannot leave my door without one of my students telling me two days later that he saw me do it. Small claustrophobic Italian town. Crossing the piazza on a Sunday is begging for awkward conversations and follow-ups on Monday. Some of them come RUNNING to me, some make nervous eye contact, wave or not, move on. Some BOLT elsewhere. The worst is when their parents are with them; that changes the whole dynamic. Hysterical, and I totally understand, having been on the other end. My favorite exchange was the student who came up to me one day and said, "Ian, I saw you at the cinema... a month and a half ago." After a weird silence, she said, "Did you like the film?"

--I started Emma thinking it would take me forever, but I actually loved it and tore right through it. I think that was the only Jane Austen novel I've read where I wasn't sure of the outcome all the way through. I mean, Pride and Prejudice is great, but once the characters are established, the outcome's pretty clear. But there was a long stretch in the middle where I really didn't know who Emma or Frank or Harriet or Mr. Knightley would get with. And Jane Fairfax. There was a hysterical bit in the middle where someone is going on and on about poor beautiful talented Miss Jane Fairfax, and Emma is basically like, "Fuck Miss Jane Fairfax. Stop talking about Jane Fairfax."

--Now that I think of it, is Sense and Sensibility like that too? I don't remember that book at all. I didn't like it.

--I broke my blinds. These are not normal blinds. These are black-out blinds that cover the windows and doors and plunge this little room into total darkness. They operate on a pulley system that's indented into the wall. The set that covers the door got tangled or something. I tried to fix it, but if you know anything about me, you can imagine how that went. I unscrewed the pulley from the wall and the cord immediately whipped away from me and crashed the blinds to the floor. I got it untangled but I messed it up somehow. I don't know what I'm doing wrong but there's no tension in the cord anymore, so I can't pull the blinds back up. So now I have to call for help. I hate calling my landlord. He makes awkward smalltalk and criticisms. Do you have an Italian girlfriend yet? Why don't you use the bike we left for you? Has anyone used the extra mattress? Don't touch the mailbox. You leave the heat on too much. Why don't you use the TV? Etc. Also, I'm insecure about my Italian the whole time. Certain things that used to be easy for me are now frustrating and difficult, from my lack of practice. So a fifteen-minute landlord visit encompasses hours of stress and feelings of worthlessness. Blah. Also, I worry I broke it permanently and will have to pay for this. I do not want to pay for anything in this apartment. I will deal with it after Easter. For now I will live in permanent semi-darkness.

--11 o'clock, should pack now...

Books: The End of the Affair

Maurice Bendrix is a writer who begins an affair with Sarah Miles, a woman married to a boring guy named Henry. Maurice falls in love with her and he believes that she loves him in return, but he's plagued by jealousy and suspicion of her, perhaps understandably. She's having an affair with him; what's to stop her from doing it with others? Then, one night during the bombings of London, Bendrix is nearly killed by an explosion and Sarah breaks of the affair with no explanation. The novel follows Bendrix as he tries to find the reason for the end of the affair.

I mentioned in my last post that I wasn't really clicking with this book. It's a slim novel but I was struggling to get through it. I've changed my tune, now that I've finished it. It went in a direction I wasn't anticipating. It became a rumination on God, love, and hate. I suppose that was dumb of me. He says on page one that this is "a record of hate far more than love." So, yeah. The spiritual journey is exhausting and, ultimately, devastating.

For me it really took off in the middle. There is a section where Bendrix steals Sarah's diary to find out what is going on with her. That section is what hooked me, as Sarah wrestles with her self-loathing and basically has it out with God:

When I was at school I learnt about a King - one of the Henrys, the one who had Becket murdered - and he swore when he saw his birthplace burnt by his enemies that because God had done that to him, 'because You have robbed me of the town I love most, the place where I was born and bred, I will rob you of that which You love most in me.' How odd I've remembered that prayer after sixteen years. A King swore it on his horse seven hundred years ago, and I pray it now, in a hotel room at Bigwell-on-Sea - Bigwell Regis. I'm going to rob you, God, of what you love most in me. I've never known the Lord's Prayer by heart, but I remember that one - is it a prayer? Of what you love most in me.

What do you love most? If I believed in you, I suppose I'd believe in the immortal soul, but is that what you love? Can you really see it there under the skin? Even a God can't love something that doesn't exist, he can't love something he cannot see. When he looks at me, does he see something I can't see? It must be lovely if he is able to love it. That's asking me to believe too much, that there's anything lovely in me. I want men to admire me, but that's a trick you learn at school - a movement of the eyes, a tone of voice, a touch of the hand on the shoulder or the head. If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there's something to admire. All my life I've tried to live in that illusion - a soothing drug that allows me to forget that I'm a bitch and a fake. But what are you supposed to love then in the bitch and the fake? Where do you find that immortal soul they talked about? Where do you see this lovely thing in me - in me, of all people? I can understand you can find it in Henry - my Henry, I mean. He's gentle and good and patient. You can find it in Maurice who thinks he hates, and loves, loves all the time. Even his enemies. But in this bitch and fake, where do you find anything to love?

It's a struggle of a spiritual journey. It's intelligent, and I so appreciated that. Some people have such a simplistic view of their own religion that I can't help but wonder if they've ever really thought about it. Also, I look at people who really believe in God and wonder how such a sentiment could ever begin. Some people are just raised to believe that, of course, but it doesn't always last. I understand how a belief in something unseeable can wear away, but how do you go from a state of non-belief to a state of belief? That's the kind of journey that Sarah's diary traces. For her, belief begins with hate and with sadness. She is sad about her state. She hates that she is betraying her husband but she loves another man. She is breaking promises. So she talks it out, through her diary, with this being who may or may not be real. The thing is, though, that hate requires a target. You have to acknowledge a thing to hate it. Making God a target plants the seed. And it blossoms from there, via this aching situation that she's trapped in. She wants to keep a promise for once.

The way he writes about her despair cracked my heart.

Nobody will know that I've broken a vow, except me and Him - and He doesn't exist, does he? He can't exist. You can't have a merciful God and this despair.

and

If I'm a bitch and a fake, is there nobody who will love a bitch and a fake?

It really is a record of hate. How hate begins, where it begins, why. How it can change, or deepen. The way Sarah's hatred of herself and for God becomes something more. The conclusions are hard. We need to suffer to know how to feel the goodness of life. But that's just so hard sometimes, and some people can't - don't want to - deal with how hard that is. Holding onto hate is easier, and maybe it feels better. The book ends on that note, with Maurice hating the God that took Sarah from him. The last sentence of this book is probably the best last sentence I've ever read. So bitter, so hateful, but also so exhausted. That's how I feel now that I'm done this book. Exhausted.