Friday, May 07, 2004
Finally, it rained in Seattle.
For weeks, the days have bloomed, gorgeous and wide-skied, endlessly sunny. How strange. I can't complain--it has dried out my once-dampened spirit and I've remembered my grace again. Along with this, since Daylight Savings Time, the skies outside my living room window stayed light until well after 9. There have been orange glimmers above the blue-shadowed Olympic mountains well after the time I'm supposed to go to bed. I haven't been able to sleep properly in weeks. My body wants to be awake. My body wants to play. My body wants it to be summer.
I can't wait for summer. Right after school, I leave for Sitka, Alaska, the happiest place on earth. Disneyland has nothing on my little fine arts camp at Sheldon Jackson College. Impassioned people teaching enthusiastic students about how to do art, and live in the world with dignified chaos. Light all night. Swapped stories in the bathroom as we brush our teeth together, Beverly and Kristin and I. Bad food in the cafeteria. Green fern fronds out my window. Endless sky. Faculty art shares. Clean air. Teaching students writing without the need to grade them at all. Perfect play. I adore that place, and I'll write much more about it later. But for now, I wish I were headed there right now.
Because the only downside of all this sunny weather has been the havoc it's playing on school. When it's 78 degrees outside, light until 10 pm, and the warmth pours in all the windows of our classrooms, not a damn one of us wants to be here. I can see the lassitude on students' faces. I can feel it seeping from mine. If someone could tell me why I need to be in a darkened office, preparing a test on the Middle East and Latin America (I mean, what in the hell? 11th grade woes are another entry), when I could be outside, walking around Greenlake, listening to Walking on Sunshine--I'd be thrilled to hear it. And don't tell me it's to earn money or be responsibile or teach the future leaders of this country the horrors of American meddling in the world. I'm tired of being serious. I just want to stretch out in the sunlight and lie in the warmth all day.
So it rained this morning. When I woke up, all the streets were slick dark with wet again. And I breathed a sigh of relief. So good to hear the gentle insistence on the skylights in my kitchen. So good to see people huddled under umbrellas, dancing with the distance between them and their cars. So good to feel the wish to hunker down on the green chair in front of my living room window and sip my coffee slowly, the warmth cascading down my throat. Home.
I love this weather. I love the sun too. I just like how ephemeral it all is here--no endless days of sunlight, at least not predictably. Weather in Seattle reminds me how quick-silver it all is. How much I want to enjoy it in the moment, not after it passes. And how I am alive.
And it's Friday afternoon. Glory be to all that is good in this world, it's Friday afternoon.
For weeks, the days have bloomed, gorgeous and wide-skied, endlessly sunny. How strange. I can't complain--it has dried out my once-dampened spirit and I've remembered my grace again. Along with this, since Daylight Savings Time, the skies outside my living room window stayed light until well after 9. There have been orange glimmers above the blue-shadowed Olympic mountains well after the time I'm supposed to go to bed. I haven't been able to sleep properly in weeks. My body wants to be awake. My body wants to play. My body wants it to be summer.
I can't wait for summer. Right after school, I leave for Sitka, Alaska, the happiest place on earth. Disneyland has nothing on my little fine arts camp at Sheldon Jackson College. Impassioned people teaching enthusiastic students about how to do art, and live in the world with dignified chaos. Light all night. Swapped stories in the bathroom as we brush our teeth together, Beverly and Kristin and I. Bad food in the cafeteria. Green fern fronds out my window. Endless sky. Faculty art shares. Clean air. Teaching students writing without the need to grade them at all. Perfect play. I adore that place, and I'll write much more about it later. But for now, I wish I were headed there right now.
Because the only downside of all this sunny weather has been the havoc it's playing on school. When it's 78 degrees outside, light until 10 pm, and the warmth pours in all the windows of our classrooms, not a damn one of us wants to be here. I can see the lassitude on students' faces. I can feel it seeping from mine. If someone could tell me why I need to be in a darkened office, preparing a test on the Middle East and Latin America (I mean, what in the hell? 11th grade woes are another entry), when I could be outside, walking around Greenlake, listening to Walking on Sunshine--I'd be thrilled to hear it. And don't tell me it's to earn money or be responsibile or teach the future leaders of this country the horrors of American meddling in the world. I'm tired of being serious. I just want to stretch out in the sunlight and lie in the warmth all day.
So it rained this morning. When I woke up, all the streets were slick dark with wet again. And I breathed a sigh of relief. So good to hear the gentle insistence on the skylights in my kitchen. So good to see people huddled under umbrellas, dancing with the distance between them and their cars. So good to feel the wish to hunker down on the green chair in front of my living room window and sip my coffee slowly, the warmth cascading down my throat. Home.
I love this weather. I love the sun too. I just like how ephemeral it all is here--no endless days of sunlight, at least not predictably. Weather in Seattle reminds me how quick-silver it all is. How much I want to enjoy it in the moment, not after it passes. And how I am alive.
And it's Friday afternoon. Glory be to all that is good in this world, it's Friday afternoon.
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