Tuesday, Oct. 07, 2003
Love Letter to Baltimore, posted at 9:00 a.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com The restlessness has ebbed, and suddenly my mood has shifted upward. It's not Baltimore I am restless with. I still love the city. I love its people, who are friendly and seem to have faith that things are continuing to improve. I love its youth, their unique, unabashed voices just forming into organized thoughts. I love that Baltimore has a midwestern and southern friendliness coupled with an east coast open-mindedness. I love the city's lack of pretension without sacrificing our amazing cultural scene. I love our Charles Theater, our eclectic neighborhoods, the theater scene. It's amazingly affordable. I love that it's not DC, our itinerant, pretentious cousin.Baltimore will always hold a special place with me. It's the city where my career started and flourished, where my self-confidence boomed, where I figured out who I was. It's where I became a man.
I'm not leaving, anytime soon. I feel like I'm too busy for any real emotions to catch on the spokes of the wheel of my life right now, as it's turning too fast for me to really keep up. I'm grabbing at thoughts and feelings as they whizz by my face and whirr in my ear, but am unable to grab each one and formulate the thoughts to fruition. I might have mistaken this for monotony, and while I have been having a sense lately of peddling without much destination, I'm still happy. The cauldron of uncertainty is still bubbling at my bedside, but the smell isn't so bad.
Today, my students have been amazing so far, practicing their little formulaic thesis statements (thesis statement = specific subject + specific impression about that subject) and learning what theme in literature is, or at least what theme in literature in high school is (re: not one word, and not main idea). Tomorrow, I present my famed "Tupac Shakur and John Steinbeck: Two Peas in a Pod" lesson. Don't worry, I don't really call it that. I'm reinvigorated. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's my torrential lack of sleep lately and my grueling workout schedule. Tonight, it's my first ever workout with a personal trainer. It's free. I'm sure they're going to try to hook me into something more after this first time freebie. I'll try to resist. I'm a bit nervous, to be honest.