Essays

I was going through emails this morning as if clearing my mind of thoughts that were no longer useful or necessary and leaving room for the important and the essentials. I came upon my Serendip collection of emails—sent, received and drafts mostly from years past, when in communication with Paul Grobstein. Unlike other emails, none of those relating to Serendip, were appropriate for deletion. There was nothing to throw out, nothing that did not hold meaning and significance since the year 2008, when my first contribution to Serendip was posted: “Disability: Images and Thoughts.” It’s as if there was no break in time since those first communications with Paul, Laura, Alice, and Ann at this very special online crucible of knowledge, creativity, playful thinking, and profound utterances. Having had to concentrate on my work as a school social worker, studies as a doctoral student in disability studies and negotiating a rather complicated and painful breakup of an 8-year relationship, caused me to put aside a number of years ago, an opportunity to contribute to a fascinating undertaking: the Breaking Project.

Cinematic pan out

as I run to the train

fleetingly wondering if I packed my inhaler,

weighed down by textbooks

and the nagging backwards pull of tardiness.

I n s l o w  m o t i o n

the last passenger climbs the steps and is swallowed by the metal mouth.

What about me?

I have my ticket.

Bought it online

so I could be on time.

Dramatic close up

as I grab the handle of the silver door.

It's cold with November kisses

yet I can still feel the pink warmth of human flesh that lingers there.

I lingered too.

That's why I'm late.

A swell of orchestral violins and cellos

(Medoza's Theme: Always One Second Behind)

as I beat sense into its skin

trying to grab someone's attention .

A montage of faces of passengers

as I am dragged along, legs following someone else's orders

stop. go. Run faster. There is still hope.

They crescendo, but the violins have dropped away, the cellos only a tremolo,

background buzz for sneers.

Or are they pitied sighs?

Zoom back to me,

setting the beast free

grabbing at a fistful of hair

molding curses from puffs of air

and the credits roll away on the rail.

        The safest way to travel is by train. A train is solid and familiar, never straying from the old

1. 1.  Time:  (Ir)rational

Caffeinated sleep

Every night I sober myself with a cup of coffee hoping to stay afloat in the watery nest of sleep. As consciousness partially washed away I hover near the surface, vulnerable at any second to the shattering sound of my alarm clock. Dreams, petrified, refuse to be concrete, whirling around in diaphanous strands, its density diluted into a pellucid reality. Sleep, its fingers touch me but lay no claim, tremulously and without confidence, self-conscious of being alternative, for it is listening eagerly to my heart, the heart that keeps pulsing toward the beat of the industrial world, denying its existence, declaring that I am not captured, that I am still marching to the daylight drum, that I am free from non-sense and do not indulge in distortions by desire. I’m domesticated by modernity. I wait to wake up. I thirst for the brilliance of cosmopolitan cities. This dark thickening poison, so holy for our contemporary time with conscious rational humans on its pedestal, I swallow it.

(sights)

(sounds)

(              )

murmurs in the background

it’s an optional world

a past unoriginal, un-whole,

and a present unacknowledged

Human Geology

            Geology has always fascinated me; I relish the discoveries scientists make each year. While I do not comprehend all of the details, I find it conceptually easy to understand. Humans on the other hand are very complicated. In the past, I have been somewhat intimidated by the prospect of trying to understand such perplexing creatures, and I would normally decide that there is no rhyme or reason to their behavior. But, that is very ignorant of me. So, I intend to use a subject I love very much to learn about a subject I never dwelled much upon. Through the lens of geology, I have found that humans and rocks share a similar characteristic: they both break. In this article, I am going to explore how rocks breaking and humans mentally breaking are similar processes.

Earthquakes:

What is an earthquake? An earthquake is a release of built up tectonic stress in the crust. This release results in displacement and breakage along a fault plane (Smith 251). 

Why does it happen?  Earthquakes happen in the crust when the strength of the rock is exceeded by the stress exerted on the rock.