Dream

I’m always teaching, this time

it’s older adults but first

the train ride of a lifetime

no carriage doors and we travel a ridge.

The woman with dreads

whose birthday treat this is,

hangs out over the edge.

Later she cries; her dreads aren’t real

and she dreams of death but

only I know this.

never do get to teach.

This all happens before the class

and then finally, Anouk

with the flashy specs

makes me lie down

and asks me gently

just when they removed

my lungs.

Sherman Alexie

Today, in a class I was taking over for another tutor, we looked at Sherman Alexie's wonderful short story, 'What You Pawn I Will Redeem'. Or, at least, most of us looked at the story. One particular student began the session with his mini notebook open. When told he wouldn't need it and to please put it away (and he had to be asked twice) he sighed before finally closing the lid, then he proceeded to read something completely different while I read the short story out loud.

I'm pretty certain the same student would be quite upset if I blatantly read the newspaper, say, or a novel, while they read their own short story aloud. This is at TAFE, by the way, not secondary school - although I agree it's more the kind of behaviour I'd expect at secondary school - if only because mostly those students haven't actually had a choice as to whether to attend the session or not. TAFE students actively enrol themselves. They want to be doing the course. They've chosen to do professional writing and editing. They are, you'd think, interested in writing, editing and reading.

It's the behaviour of students like Mr I-Have-No-Manners that makes teaching so difficult and teachers so disenchanted.

I used to say my children when they complained about a particular attitude of mine or punishment meted out to them, 'You get the parent you deserve'. Most students deserve an engaged, interested teacher, prepared to put in a little extra time because their students share a passion for whatever is being taught. Others clearly don't. Personally, I'm a little fed up with being sabotaged by the minority. It's disheartening. Consider me disheartened.

On the upside, the Sherman Alexie story is a wonderful vehicle for discussing both myth and symbols and I'm as in awe of the story as I was the first time I read it two months ago. I love the quest of the anti-hero, the disappering people, the mysterious pawnshop and the compassion of the story. I love the structure, which should lend the story some imperative but, in fact, increases the sense of dislocation from time and reality suffered by addicts. I particularly love the end, that ephemeral moment of redemption - like the I Ching hexagram, Grace - a temporary state to be relished and remembered but not relied on.

What's going on...

I have succumbed to the dream of a clean house and bought Enjo products. But, hey, if they even make me think more about cleaning they've got to be good! Actually it was the mop that sold me. Anything that you can whisk over the floor and don't have to do all that bucket lugging and rinsing.

I have completely failed to put a new drive band around my double drive spinning wheel. I have no idea why this has happened. It pisses me off no end. I'm goign to give it another go today after downloading a wagon-load of stuff from the 'Net. I mean, honestly, it can't be rocket science. These are simple machines. These are pre-industrial revolution machines. I can operate a digi camera. I can even operate the one on my mobile phone. So a spinning wheel? Give me a break Arachne!

I have finished making the Baby Yoda Jacket. I hope the receipient hasn't outgrown it already. Why on earth did this take so long to make? It was easy peasy, just a lot of fiddly sewing later and if I make another one, I'll try to do the fronts and back as one piece and remember to Kitchener the shoulder seams. Why do I never remember to Kitchener the shoulder seams? Pictures to come.

I became (briefly) so pissed off with teaching that I decided to give it up. Then I decided to change my attitude. And bits of my approach.

I became (briefly) enamoured with the idea of knitting my way through Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Almanac. Then I decided that I didn't want to make: long johns, mittens, Christmas ornaments or quite so many baby clothes (the girlchild is only fifteen!!), the weave-in blanket or the last minute sweater. Half the almanac, in fact, was knocked out, thus spoiling the entire idea.

I then decided I'd plan six projects for myself, from various books I own (don't ask how various, please, the knitting - and cooking - section of my library is slightly embarassing), magazines and 'net sources. This is after I finish The Sweater for the Accountant. And some socks and an important scarf - for which I need the *&%$# spinning wheel to work.

I have my tickets to the Melbourne Writer's Festival. I'm reluctantly only going next Thursday. What with boyman's birthday, girlchild's trip to Japan and my three days in Brisbane, time is being munched up monstrously. Still, I will enjoy Thursday. I love the ambience of the festival and I'm looking forward to seeing how it fares at ACMI. This will be the third venue change for the festival. The very first one I attended was at the Kino. It was totally exciting and I loved every minute. It rapidly outgrew the Kino and landed at the Malthouse which was like a mini Festival city. Now it's back in the Melbourne CBD. I think it's good being the CBD.

I've set myself a challenge - to enter the Scarlet Stiletto short story Competition. Short notice, I know, and I won't beat myself up if I don't do it.

I've been feeling sad recently. I hesitate to use the word depressed, because I think we use it too often to talk about sadness and grief. I've been grieving. When I'm in this state I need to keep doing small things to keep my head above the waterline. I thought I was doing enough small things but it only took a couple more blows to knock me back. Hence the knitting and the short story competition. These things help me move forward, back into joy.

Writing and teaching are vulnerable occupations. Some days the rewards are fantastic - a student understands something and begins editing their own work with a rigour they've not been able to show before, a piece of writing magically works.

Other days there are no rewards. Students, post-secondary students! - write notes to each other in class. Another dismisses most writing with the banal statement that it's all boring, (well, hello why are you here then? Why not go and be a mechanic, instead?)Yet another is discourteous to a fellow student. Writing that you want to be compelling, vivid and snapping with energy falls on the page as grey and uninviting as cold dishwater.

It's important for me to have safety nets when all the bad things happen. I don't construct these particularly well. I'm always blown away by post-secondary students who don't want to be in the classroom. Who wouldn't want to discuss writing, have time to write in the classroom - not have to juggle it away from feeding kids, negotiating relationships, completing administrative tasks, - and then to have their work workshopped. My God! If I'd been able to spend a year, two years or three years doing that! I loved the subjects I did at University passionately but professional writing and editing? I'd have been limpeted myself in that department and they'd have had to prise me lose with a crowbar.

Clearly everyone doesn't feel that way. Why should I care if they do or don't? But I do care. So I have to make myself safety nets. Elizabeth Zimmerman's Aran Sweater. A new sparkly hat. Cooking different things for the family. Cooking lessons for the Bayard boys. Rebooting my ipod. Which is a very good idea and which I shall attempt to do now.