Patience.

I'm still banned from going inside.  Still waiting for an explanation.

And worse, because I'm waiting, our students and teachers are waiting.

--

When my mom was here, she came down to the beach with me each morning.  The first morning, on the way down, I pointed out at which house you can start to hear the waves coming in.  The second day she pointed out the arrival of that sound, and on the last day, I said, "there they are." And Mom said, "They're always there."

I thought about that this morning as I sat in my spot and watched.

Kimo has been there practicing tai chi each morning for the last thirty-eight years.  Hasn't missed a day in THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS.  He'll be there.

Because it's the way my English major brain works, I started to construct a narrative, some kind of meaning analogous to what's been going on in my life.

It's dark when I get there every morning, and even though I know the sun will come up -- that soon it will be 7:00, and it will be daytime, and I will have to leave -- most mornings I still feel a half-second of panic about the darkness.  Just a half a second, but I always notice it and wonder about myself.

Blah blah blah the Biblical platitude about darkness and light.  Referenced probably too much, I still find solace:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  The Word was with God in the beginning.  Through the Word all things were made; without the Word nothing was made that has been made.  In the Word was life, and that life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

I used to write the above on the inside cover of every notebook I ever used for my lesson planning.  Public schools are pretty fucking "dark" places, and I wanted to have abiding faith that "the darkness does not overcome it."  The school-to-prison pipeline, in the end, does not win.

Then again, the whole thing should be complicated (, as we say in grad school.  "Let's complicate that. Let's unpack it.  Let's problematize that.").  (I know I link a lot here, but click on that one and watch.  Teaser: some Malcolm X!)

Point of all this: the dang sun comes and is going to come (and has always come) every morning.  Just wait.  It's going to happen.  Shitty shit can't last forever.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.  Wait.  Be steadfast.

I haaaaaaate waiting.

Wait.  Be steadfast.  It's plainly predictable that things will get better.

I wanted to come home and write about it, so I left early.  As I was going I noticed that the first step, from the sand to the concrete stairs, seemed a lot taller than I remembered.  I dismissed the thought as another instance of my general failure to notice details, but then I noticed a whole bunch of really rounded, big-ass boulders up at the top of the beach that I know were not there before.

Science or God or whatever: my whole theory got effed up.  I did not expect that.  Never seen those there before.  Kimo had told me earlier that it had been really windy yesterday (when I was at home, sleeping in.)  I wonder what the ocean was doing at my beach.  It was doing something because the whole level of it was a foot lower, and there were all these beautiful rocks that had either washed up or been uncovered when the sand was washed away.

Wait.  Be steadfast.  It's plainly predictable that things will get better.  Be humble: don't rule out the possibility that things will get better than imagined -- or differently than imagined.  Know that you don't know.



--

And in my life and my stupid banned-ness:

Wait.  Be steadfast.  It's plainly predictable that things will get better.  Be humble: don't rule out the possibility that things will get better than imagined -- or differently than imagined.  Know that you don't know. Quit being such an arrogant asshole.