On the Eve of No Longer Being a Teacher

Lately I've been thinking a lot about self.

This was my last year teaching. For the better part of 4 1/2 years this defined me in multiple ways. I was a teacher, but also an adjunct. I was paid little better than minimum wage. Making less than $2000 a month. I had other jobs. In the years I taught I also packaged items for online sale, made coffee, worked at a pizza place, wrote food reviews, worked at Publisher's Weekly on book reviews, and freelance edited. I still made less than $40k a year.

As a result my identity was one of not having. More importantly, of over-working only to not have.

I grew up ok. Not poor. My father was in the US Air Force. The buffer of not paying rent hides a lot of the discomfort of low wages for our military. Ultimately, I had a comfortably lower-middle class childhood. I never went hungry. We went on vacation. I had a Nintendo. My childhood identity was one of not thinking about identity and class.

I am now 37.

My adult life has sat firmly in the lower class. I only recently crossed the $30k marker. And I often think about how my identity, while not tied to income, is definitely tied to my relationship to $$$. Mostly, this comes out as a comfort in not ever having it. In spending it when I do.

This feels like a common response in the lower rungs of America in 2018. You use what you have when you have it. Because tomorrow you will have nothing.

For the time I was a teacher I spent most of my hours working at one of the various jobs I listed above. My identity shifting slightly with each. But in the background I was still a teacher. A writer. A person doing "good" work.

One year ago the school I worked at until this passed week announced its closure. It wasn't really a surprise, but it was a blow to both the city I live in and to myself personally.

I have never felt like the kind of person who would move for a job. And the idea of finding a teaching gig out of New Mexico actively made me anxious.

Without the background umbrella of "teacher", who was I. Was I ready to go back to being coffee shop employee, or waiter, or anything else.

It was a blow to my self.

The school officially closes June 1 but my job there is over May 16th when grades are due. At that moment I will no longer be a teacher.

Part of this shift has been trying to find a new job.

I spent 6 months last year applying to academic jobs across New Mexico and the country. Most were low-paying or only part time. Many of the out of state jobs were offering less than I was already making. The concept of moving across the country for $2000 a month is ridiculous. But I know people who took those offers. This breaks my heart. I decided I couldn't do this. That teaching, despite it being what I did, couldn't be this huge of a thing in my life that I would take a wage that couldn't even support me.

Shedding identities is not easy.

I spent most of 2017 in a literal haze. Auto pilot became pretty normal. As this final school year started I looked up for the first time in a long time and realized I had lost myself in the grind to feed myself.

I always told myself I was a writer first. Everything else was meant to be paychecks.

Somewhere along the way I convinced myself that it was ok to erode the identity of writer to the point where it became hard to say that in response to "what do you do".

How does one reclaim land washed away?

I suppose the answer has something to do with throwing the garbage in the water until you can build on top of it.

The more honest one, the healthier one, is that you don't reclaim it. You move. You build somewhere else. You don't repeat the mistakes you made. You don't allow the river in.

A new self will find purchase on the new rock.

Poem-A-Day #141 : Study on Rain #2

After I finished my undergrad I had a long period of time without writing. I worried on this for months. I began to stare at objects and write all the angles I could to fill up pages. Out of that, a series of 'studies' emerged. This is part of one on rain.


Study on Rain #2 (7/19/04)

The road
becomes alive
after a rain storm

The black
a deep well
with an awkward pulse

Dialated
eyes blinded
by moonlight

In Santa Fe
there are no drains
the water pools

Or runs
into little mouths
so that the street's history
can be hissed

Poem-A-Day #107 : Assimilation Is The New Weapon

Assimilation Is The New Weapon*

Wind is picking up drops from the silver clouds and setting them on the heads of the people gathered around the monument to dead Spaniards killing Natives

And this is how we begin - we pray a Catholic prayer that mentions Conquistadors and imperialism - this is how we honor our dead - many from an island currently in the limbo of colonial rule

And the gay mayor will stand there and call himself the MC for this event like it's a prom and there will be bands and refreshments and maybe someone will get lucky in the bathroom

Politicians and activists will stand and congratulate themselves on their progressive bona fides and talk about the children they have and how those children just hate gun violence

You will be forgiven for thinking this is a rally for assault weapons bans and sane gun regulations and not the vigil for the dead - all the dead - in Orlando

The joke is that Santa Fe is a Disney version of Spanish colonialism in the Americas - the adobe and rounded corners a sort of hall of mirrors to attract tourism

But where are the fucking queers in this vigil for dead queers - the nice heterosexual white lady up there needs us to clap for her tears so let's go ahead and clap

The politicians certainly want our votes but really Javier - M-fucking-C - like a fucking party - like we're in the nightclub and it's only 1AM and the idea of violence is so far away that we can't hear it over the sound of music and drag and alcohol and dancing

Like the moment isn't coming when the sound will drop out and the screaming will start and people will fucking hide in bathrooms and play dead and be killed like cattle in a yard - is that the party you want to MC Javier - we expect our queer politicians to be better - to not only mug for national cameras and claim community when it serves a career

Heres the thing - Peace Choirs are bull shit - gun violence is a discussion worth having - but the sky is opening up and the clouds are sending down freezing cold drops and this is what you bring us - a woman who was shocked that gun violence exists in America - a politician in a suit clapping for his colleagues who bothered to show up - letting the queers speak 45 minutes into a vigil to our dead

Look at their bodies - this is how it begins - the club is dark and packed and sweaty and amazing and the music is a heartbeat - the heartbeat scatters into the corners and then there are bullets tearing and it is a different but equal kind of awe - a different kind of rhythm because even then - as those queer people - brown people - our people - were dying there - we all knew how this would go

Hands can only wring themselves so much - skin is not like paper but it does go raw and your tears are not cleansing like this desert rain and your ambition is not the same thing as grief

And maybe it is a dance and we are all moving sullenly and the band is terrible because it just keeps playing the same damn song about loss and redemption until our ears can no longer hear

Near the memorial to the dead Spaniards who came to this land and conquered it and killed the people who lived here where they stood - a man collapses

In grief or tedium is unclear - but his gray hair is slicked back and his shirt is open and he has on a pride medallion and the urge to ask how many dead in his past is too sharp to bear

How many vigils has he seen - how many in rain - how many were attended to by the wings of dark angels bearing news cameras and platitudes about guns



* Quote from CAConrad's The Library of Congress Censored Interview (Bloof Books)

Poem-A-Day #89 : Impressive Instant

Impressive Instant

One eye on the patch of skin at the base of my neck - one on the dog being dragged across the street
its legs strung up in the leash - there is a car coming

The dog has stopped walking the man is pulling and laughing - a woman with a cigarette dangling from her mouth says that both will be hit

I feel like this moment is being binge watched - can it absorb - this compression

There is too much being held by this otherwise dull moment - in reality not much is released

The dog is fine - somewhere the man too - we finished our cocktails within the hour and the night crept over the mountains unsure of its place in the new spring

What is so interesting about décolletage - about the smell of water on dry earth - the color of whiskey floating in the corner of an eye

Poem-A-Day #60 : Surf's Up

Surf's Up

It is the age of the octopus -
                    of long form writing -

          The age of golden fingers telling the internet their opinions
and then -

When the oceans rise will the AI still be given feminine names
                    and the faces of dead children?

                                                            In Santa Fe water takes over for the sand

                    There is an impulse to deny this is happening - that
                                                  the leverage of thumbs is just to damn great -

                                                  Suckers are not the grooves in flesh
                                  they cannot feel warmth -

                                  They splat on glass - they are easy to baseball bat into pulp

                    Perhaps it is best to only think-piece on this - we must turn to 4chan for help
the worry on the lips of the USB port cannot possibly convey
          the concern of mountains becoming hills

The Only Thing I Have To Declare Is...

Last night I went to the opera. The show was the new opera 'Oscar' that had its premier at the Santa Fe Opera this summer. It moves to Philadelphia in 2015.

It is a good thing that the show has over a year before its next performance because it was not good. The worst I've ever seen.

It managed to be outdated, dull, poorly directed, drama free, and generally awful. How does a new show feel like it's 30 years old?

It was witless. Artless. My jaw dropped and I held my sweater in front of my mouth so bugs wouldn't fly in there.

It was not about overcoming adversity. It wasn't about love. It wasn't about politics. It wasn't about Oscar Wilde. I don't even know what it was about because it was so so so broken.

The lyrics were laughable. The prison was played for comedy then discussed as a hellish place. It was all telling and zero showing. Walt Whitman was the narrator? Bosie was a mute dancer......

I have no real words to describe it beyond this. Because it was that bad. There was a song about ABSINTHE.

When I see bad art I have to think it out. I joked last night that I would need to go to therapy to process the night. It was a joke, but kinda true. Bad art is depressing, sad, etc. But gigantic failures have lessons hidden in them. Lessons about process and editing. Lessons about huge corporations pumping money into the creative process. Lessons about people not telling other people no.

It makes me want to scream. Scream then write a better version.

As we were clapping for the cast at the end you could feel the sadness in the room. A sort of 'sorry guys' vibe. I clapped for the fact that the cast was trying their best. The score was interesting. The set was really good.

But every time the show would get to something good it would do something absolutely mind-numbingly dumb. Like end with Walt Whitman ushering Oscar Wilde into heaven...where a pantheon of classic writers dressed in white angel costumes welcome him into 'immortality'. And his response? He makes a joke about wanting to make a good sauce and says 'thanks'...

I don't even know what more to say right now. That is how weird the experience was. It is hard to be coherent about incoherence. Hard to form a center about a non-held object.

Will someone in Philadelphia go see this hot mess in 2015 and tell me if it is good? Better yet, someone let me stay with them so I can watch it again and see what's different. Because it will ALL be different.

Do Over

I am back in New Mexico after 7 years away. Walking the streets of Santa Fe looking for work has been both a reconnection and a bit demoralizing.

This place is where I went to college. Where I 'grew up'.

Today I applied at the cafe I worked at in 2001 when I was awoken at 5am by a phone call telling me to be careful when I went out to my car that morning. That the person on the other end was 'watching' me. Was aware of the time I left my dorm room, alone, in the dark.

Obviously I called and told them I didn't feel safe. That I would come in after the sun was up.

When I got home the word 'faggot' had been written on my door in sharpie. I painted over it in a blue that was clearly lighter. I hung a dry erase board over the spot.

The College of Santa Fe has since gone out of business and been renamed the Santa Fe University of Art and Design.

Fogelson Library, College of Santa Fe

This is the city where I got my only ticket. After watching the final Lord of the Rings movie at a midnight showing I was driving home at 3am. I was stopped at a light at Cerillos and St. Francis. The light would not change. It stared red at me for 10 minutes. I was making a left. I went when it was safe to. Immediately a cop showed up. He had been watching me from the vacant lot across the street.

He didn't ticket me for the turn. But for a burned out headlight that I didn't know about.

That vacant lot is now a Starbucks drive through. They don't have an inside seating area, just some chairs under an awning. There are heaters so people can sit and use their laptops. Outside. So far there have been people there every day.

These two anecdotes are not meant to moan the change. Nor is it a 'I'm getting old' pastiche. It is merely noting the change. The history.

In returning I am revisiting. I am redoing. I am also moving on. From the New York thing to whatever this will be.

And that is exciting. But it also has me worried. What will my writing be like now? Who am I here, in this place, now? I am in my 30s. What does that mean?

So far I've decided to rewrite the first third of the novel that was supposedly finished. The one agents are looking at. Or, were looking at. Since none have said more than 'thank you'. So I am rewriting. And that seems to make sense. The part of the novel that I've decided to do over is the part set in Santa Fe.

It is the beginning of the story.

And also the end.

Odds-on

Odds-on 4/9

I look out over the city of Santa Fe and I see a tilting plane of desert – a cracked paper surface and scared face of earth – the buildings are growing – a giant’s causeway – the sky is the inside of a bowl glazed in turquoise and silver – I look over this place and see nothing of the poor children the inequity the people – this makes me heartless – I look at your face and see light radiating from your pores – it’s something like your soul – something like mine – this makes me unable to see individuals to see myself to see anything but the molecules slipping into bed with each other and forming things – my finger – yours

Overstand

Santa Fe is a strange place that one strongly loves and hates.


Overstand 5/27

Santa Fe is a penny
A penny burning in moonlight
From here is it a puddle oozing down the foothills
Gray water filling the Rio Grande, flooding farms
Farmlands that are filling with locusts with man faces
Doll-like crawlers wearing green saris
Hopping clipping the wind and running the rain

Santa Fe is a brown square
A square poking out its sides
Lurching towards an ocean never seen
Again with water filling one thing emptying another
The ebb of some copper moon holding the last fall grains
A rectangle nursing burned grasses
Suckling arroyos

Santa Fe is a while
A whole sinking into mesa
Sharp sides pulsing the horizon
A gouge in landscape huge stroke of black coal
Against the redding night
It hops on all fours and calls like a whore
Her eyes done in spirals

Santa Fe is a fetish
A fetish doll on a shelf telling stories
Little clay-faced babies sitting on its lap
It whispers like a barn owl the hair on your neck stands
Feels like a shadow over the sun
A sudden rush of cold in the dry beds
A supporting hand on your neck while you sleep