Wednesday, June 4, 2008

concerning the morning sky











Shapes push into the horizon, forms separating themselves from the charcoal dusk. The mornings are the nicest time of the day here. The end of the year has come, and I notice a full-circle effect a bit more every day: the rainy season is here again, turning the streets into tacky mud each night, and they will dry up again the following day. It reminds me of when i came in august, when the rain flooded the streets and knocked the electricty out.
New teachers are coming, old teachers are going. I am going. I am going. I am going.
There is a sweetness hanging over our conversations: We made it!
And there is anxiety: How do we leave just as life begins to settle? And what will come next?
How did another year just happen? Surely it should've been longer; I should've given up at some point.
Summer leads into a new summer, a full circle. It's time for something new.
And yet there's something incredibly unsatisfying about the 'full circle', about life arcing from point a to point a. there is so much gained and too much lost, and I'm not sure where the starting point is anymore. A better metaphor would be falling leaves: they don't go in circles; they dive back and forth like wide, invisible, cursive L's.

I've been waiting for the 3 big mango trees in my yard to announce the end of the year with armloads of fruit. I've had my eyes on the trees for a while now, at least since Christmas, waiting for something to happen. But the branches are still empty and disappointed like the cub scout that never earns any gold arrowhead patches. The neighbors have mangos in their yards, so it doesn't make sense that on the other side of the brick wall, I have none. Where's the completion in the turn of summer? -and similarly- Where's the fruit to show for the time I've been here at school? I've dreamt so long about finishing this school year with a great finale, like a brilliant sun-rise (you know, the kind that Sigur Rós is always mewing about). Instead, the end of school comes like any other day: exceedingly normal. In fact, I have plenty of boring grading to fill up my last week.

It's like waiting for the sunrise; you don't necessarily see it happen, because houses or hills block the east, but gradually you see it everywhere. The sky turns from ash to blue, undramatically, but it's nice to be feel it happen.


It's unrealistic (and generally unsatisfying) to have high-resolution endings. Things just end, heavy and unresolved. Maybe it's our task to create the meaning, to piece together disparaging and contradictory aspects of our life. Our experiences are like white dots on black paper, and like constellations, we have to decide where and how to draw the lines.

The act of waiting defines us more profoundly than the object of our waiting. It has been more meaningful to me to wait for mangos that never come, or to wait for an ending without trumpets and fireworks... and still more meaningful are the people that i have experienced this year with, other teachers and friends: waiting, keeping our eyes up and interested, concerned with the morning sky.



Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2142511&l=59826&id=29705820