Wednesday, Sept. 01, 2004
Dinner, Kid, Frankenstein, Shindig, posted at 10:21 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Dinner with the girl was cool. She and I have great chemistry; it's too bad she lives in New York City. I just sit and laugh and laugh when I talk with her; she's such a good story teller. I hadn't seen her in a year and a half, I realized when I met up with her. That eighteen months have been, for the most part, pretty sucky, but I feel much better now. If I could only get my damn weight to drop under 200 again, I think everything will be back to how I felt during Jan '02 to March '03, which I now see as pretty much the best time of my life. Maybe because it was just because I was getting laid a lot, I don't know. But I really just felt good about myself.Anyhow, I last saw her, I guess, in May of '02, so it has been a while. She told me that it's so great that we still keep in touch, even though she's not a rock star anymore. She's so good; not only does she have a great voice, but she is a good songwriter. Her songs aren't about the turn of the phrase or even character studies, like Dylan or Kahn or Bern, but rather they're about what people do to each other in relationships. They're about inaction and paralysis, they're about telling a partner to grab you before you're gone, they're about longing. All are themes I connect with, so I just think she's great. And that voice... wow. I don't know many singers that have as good a voice as she does. My apologies to Usher.
Anyhow, she says she has had writer's block now for a couple of years, and doesn't really do much with music anymore except as a session player. She's working in an insurance company. Maybe she'll get back into it. I'm sure other singers became insurance workers before making it famous.
Anyhow, yeah, it's too bad she lives in NYC. And sort of dating someone. Otherwise, she'd be perfect. I'm going to have to make it a point to go and visit her. My good friend Neil Eckardt (putting his name in here intentionally because I hope he googles himself and finds out that I can't get a hold of him and would like to) just moved there in July, so I hope to make a trip (only the second of my life) there soon.
We ate at the new "tropical" themed place in the Towson Circle. I can't remember the name. Bahama something, maybe. It's above Trader Joe's. Our waitress was hilarious, not in a good way. She looked and acted like a psychotic version of that pretty girl who did the Noxema or Neutrogena commercials. I'm sure no one followed this paragraph.
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Today was a good day. Robert, a kid who I've become rather close with in the last two years, based mainly off of two week-long camping trips I helped lead through Outward Bound, made a special trip to school for the second day in a row (missed him yesterday) to see me. He's got an old soul and has lived a pretty tough life, by my standards. Dad was never in the picture. Mom died when he was 4. He lives with his much older aunt. I met his big sister once, who also lives with them, and she seemed to be a big junkie. I like the kid a lot. When I first met him, he was about 4'6" and was a little punk. But one night out in the mountains on the Appalacchian Trail, all ten of us were laying on our backs, watching the starry sky, and a shooting star appeared. It was amazing. I'd never seen one, and of course the kids had never seen one either, as they were all city kids and you can barely see the stars over the city lights. Robert seemed to open up then, wrote a poem about the moment, showed it to me, and we connected pretty well. I then had him as a student. He was an enigma because he was very intelligent but didn't get good grades, and when he almost was reassigned after getting poor grades his 9th grade year, I wrote a letter on his behalf - sticking my neck out a bit - and gave it to my principal. He stayed, and is now a strong "B" student.
The second trip we went on, he was a veteran, and I told him it was okay to call me by my first name since I wasn't his teacher any longer. At the end of the trip, he called me his friend, and it was a pretty powerful moment when he invited me into his home to meet his aged aunt and messed up sister, because I know he was showing me something that he doesn't usually show people.
Anyhow, I took his number over the summer, and promised myself I would give him a ring to check on him - because I do worry about him, he still seems on the verge of doing something bad sometimes - and maybe go to an Orioles game. But I read this Dear Abby column from some mother who was concerned because her son's teacher wanted to take him to a soccer tournament during a holiday break - they were both really into soccer and had known each other for years - and not only did Abby give advice not to do it, but she told this woman that she should report the teacher to the school district for fraternizing with students outside of school. I've never received any sort of message about that from my school system - in fact, the opposite - but it still made me feel guilty, and, that, coupled with three separate trips back to Michigan and work this summer, let his number stay idle on my phone.
He asked about it today, and I immediately felt guilty, and invited him to this shindig at the Maryland Science center tonight for new teachers. He couldn't go, but seemed to want to. I went anyway - a good friend works there and invited me - and it was pretty cool. Tons of free food, free Orioles tickets, WBAL's Tim Touten, the deputy mayor. I hadn't been there since the expansion, and it looks quite a bit different. My planetarium show I did with them and my students is still there, which is pretty unbelievable. That thing has now been seen by over one million people.
Then I went to Bally's and now I'm back home, ready to do it all over again tomorrow.
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If anyone has any pictures of Frankenstein, or monsters or scary things in general, I'd love to have them. I just spent $27.50 of money I don't currently have on two posters in Urban Posters in Fells Point, one of a poster from the movie Evil Dead 2 because it had a big old skull on it, and one poster from a vintage Frankenstein film. I need more stuff to help decorate the ENG 3 Board (course theme: How men turn into monsters. We're reading Lord of the Flies, Frankenstein, The Fifth Child, and MacBeth. It's Brit Lit.)
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This site has been visited 557 times, exactly, in each of the last two days. What are the odds? I don't know why, really, because I'm usually in the mid-300s. Maybe I've been writing more. I've been thinking a lot lately about what this journal means to me, why I continue doing it, why I seem to be being more and more bold and more and more personal in it. Anyhow, that's stewing. You can look forward to that sometime soon, perhaps.