rose, plasma, and ruby

The first two weeks of school have me wearing rose-colored glasses.

This means that I cannot help but see my students (all 105 of them!) as sheer promise and possibility, my classrooms as charmingly too warm and overcrowded, and the buildings where I teach as importantly urban and impressively unique. I cherish this, because I know that, in about four weeks, things will be drastically different, and by the time the end of the semester rolls around, I will have had just about enough.

It's hard to not write about work. A friend recently suggested that, even as it is now, perhaps this blog is too public. I have a lot of stories to tell about the students I teach, as well as thoughts on working in the university. I spend an amazing amount of time reflecting on the millions of things I say out loud in class, the back and forth I have with the kids (although they are hardly "kids," and the ages range from 18 to 65), the things they ask, the interruptions that anger me, the posturing of the perpetually thugged or goth-ed out, the inspired imitations I do of characters or events in the fiction we read, how I can make some students laugh to the point where they cannot stop. I don't want this blog to be about work, in that way, although I wonder what would happen if I decided to write a running, public critique of the institution, a la www.michaelberube.com?

A couple of notes on fruit: 1) The pomegranate is slowly but surely ripening! It has darkened to an interesting plasma-red, with just a portion at the top that has yet to turn color. 2) A correction: apparantly, my friend Kayte was the first to notice and identify the pomegranate at the very beginning of the summer. 3) I had a dream last week that there were pomegranate trees up and down Hawthorne street, all with ripening fruit. In the dream, I stepped outside and visted each one. I marveled over how gorgeous they were, and as I made my way toward the last tree at the end of the street, I noticed that the pomegranate fruits were steadily becoming more and more ripe. When I got to the last tree, I looked up and saw a pomegranate fruit that looked more like a plush children's toy than any sort of vegetation. I was absolutely stunned. It was ruby red, soft and fluffy, and I knew in my mind it was the ripest one of all.