The following outpouring brought on by watching Emily dance unreservedly to Clementine by Pink Martini. If I ever get my video rendering capabilities up to snuff I’ll post a link here. Just trust me-it is 7 year old interpretive dance at its best. You know-remember how YOU felt being seven and dancing, just dancing. No judgment, just dancing. Ahhh. It was gorgeous.

I’ve always been overly affected by music. I won’t tell you what my first listening of the eponymous Psychedelic Furs did to the next several years of my life way back when or why the Dead Kennedys caused me to shave my head when everyone knew that girls were supposed to be pretty not angry. But it didn’t stop way back when. I just can’t help being beaten or seduced by music. Have you ever had a song hit you unexpectedly? A song in a style you maybe you don’t normally listen to? Or from an unexpected source? One that grabs your guts, give you shivers and just stuns you? This has happened to me several times lately.

One was, of all things a song by Everlast from a TV show–the theme to saving grace. Yes I like the show and character (a lot actually, I fancy myself having a bit of her type of personality in me) but those of you who know me know this ain’t my usual kind of music–I’m more of a Dead Can Dance, Abney Park, gothy techno girl).

I also have a complicated relationship with the themes of that song…my spirituality is in flux and my understanding of the divine is now interspersed with moments of earth shattering congruence (When all of a person`s internal beliefs, strategies, and behaviours are fully in agreement and oriented toward securing a desired outcome–basically when everything is exactly as it should be ) which are leading me to places of thought and belief I’ve not been before).

But for some reason this song just tears me up. It makes me shiver, it nearly makes me cry, it certainly makes me feel fierce. Yes really. All that. What don’t you have those sorts of reactions to music?

Another bit of music that hit me hard came when I was student teaching in Sharla’s class. She played Explosions in the Sky to help the kids during writing time. I’d never heard them before. It think they are on a tv show someone said, but I’d never heard of them. (Confession: I go through spates of watching a lot of TV. I have it on authority (notice I didn’t say good) that I’m supposed to feel badly about that; however I read an obscene amount so I don’t. And I spent about 8 years without a TV so I’ve got the cred already). Anyway, I now have three of their CDs and I’m looking into the instrumental post rock genre now. Do what?

I’ll forever associate this music with this …do I say attempt? Do I say deviation? I don’t feel as if I failed when I left the M.A.T. program, though this is hard won. I feel …well all who wander are not lost, you know? I wanted that, it was a dream I’d had since I was a kid, but I found the dream and reality didn’t mesh. I found I really wanted something different and I’m lucky enough that I’ve got that now. But back to the music. Explosions in the Sky will always mean meeting a new and amazing friend, someone I feel touched my soul almost immediately, someone who replaced a darker, earlier incidence of a similar meeting. EitS also soars and crashes as I did during that 5 months. I learned so much, in some ways more than I wanted to. I wish I could have kept the idealism but …I can’t. I’ve seen too much in my life. Explosions in the sky is all of that.

I made a video (actually several) during my time in the teaching program. It is almost painful for me to watch now. I was angry by that point. ONE girl,worked with me on it,the other did almost nothing. I did all the video work and if you know about how much goes into something like this you KNOW…well I just can’t do less than my best. The time I let that happen in classroom management class…EW…that’s another story and another part of the reason I left the program. You know it actually IS important to do your best;. Yes I like doing stuff like this but it only works easily if you do WHAT I ASK YOU TO DO –Yo, respect your compatriots right?

I wish I hadn’t quit, but only because I hate to quit, hate to give up– not because it was the wrong decision, it’s just that I hate quitting. But– I guess when you spend a week in the fetal position, crying and sick, that’s telling you something. I will applaud in awe of those who finish and go on…it ain’t for me–you know how much I’ve always chafed against “the system.” And I can support people working creatively within the system I just can’t be the one…”kicking against the pricks.” (Nick Cave) Something I’ve learned often and again now–I do better liminally. Jyllian exists just to the side of most things. I am happiest that way. Anyway–this music will always be this highs and lows, the sorrows and triumphs of reaching for that dream, holding it and putting it(not so) gently away. At least I know that when I am on my deathbed, I will not have that as regret. I would have before.

Finally The Penguin Cafe Orchestra. J and I watched a movie that I despise–Napoleon Dynamite (I find it mean spirited, not funny) but there was a song in it that I had to find. It was Song for a Found Harmonium by PCO. To say it changed me is an understatement. I began finishing my mid life crisis because of this music. Some of ya’ll might know I started off as a kid with a classical music fixation–even years later when I worked for KUAF I did CLASSICS BY REQUEST, not because I got paid (that helped) but I love(d) classical music. Honestly I like most music…I think I’ve even found some country and some western. I like expressions of feeling with instruments—words or not. So when I started looking for the next thing… I ran across this song after hating this movie (late to seeing it). Because with a kid–we don’t’ see movies most times (until recently) until they’ve been out of the theatres for about a year or more.

ANYway…I spent my first year in Fayetteville going through (the trauma) of moving home. Moving back after 20 years is good, but not without challenges. There’s more of that in another entry. But after that first year I had 2 deaths, and three miscarriages in er..my first 3 years back in the land I grew up in. Oh yeah and major surgery (and I’ll never ever get over certain good folk who brought us food, mowed our lawn..god no adequate words for those kindnesses). And I got back one of my two best friends (the other died when she was 24 and me 26) and then she left a couple of years later. Wow I just saw that written down and um yeah…so no wonder I’ve been a bit looney. Ok…This music IS me coming to terms with past, present and future. There’s classical and punk in Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Just like me. Comic books AND Candide. Sex pistols and Stravinsky. Emily Dickinson and eXene Cervenka. yep.

So this turned into something much bigger than I intended. I just wanted to know what music grabbed you by the guttiwuts recently. So do please respond. I’m always taking in new music.

Saving Grace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxu21fYnKMw

Explosions in the sky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosions_in_the_Sky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jotDBl1vilg

Penguin Café Orchestra
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJg1NNyke2E
another song that makes me feel like I”m a kid running down a hill

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvbCV6E0Wro

http://www.penguincafe.com/

New year, new design. I’ve actually been playing with that a lot lately. I like the last one but it was too dark. The one before that had some other issues with fonts that didn’t want to be fixed

I really like this one, it’s very Steampunk and I think I’ll keep it for awhile. the widgets also work nicely and I haven’t had to tweak the style sheets any yet.

I had my first “week” of work. Week is in quotes because we had two snow days. I didn’t understand today’s snow day–until I saw the ice under the very light dusting of snow. Cars were sliding all over our street.

I am loving my new job. I haven’t really done anything yet other than some training and meeting a bajllion people, but everyone I’ve met is really great. Seriously cheerful folk. And the others in my position–well there isn’t a lot of turnover, which is a very good sign. I really think I’ve found what I’m supposed to be doing. It draws on all of my strengths–technology, educational technology and working with kids and teachers. I have a pretty steep learning curve because of just how amazing our school system is aobut using technology–but none of it is completely unfamiliar. The only thing I’m actually nervous about is setting up the ginormous sound system at the middle school I’m at.

And it makes the time in school not a wrong turn. I woldn’t have found this passion if I hadn’t tried out that childhood dream. I admire teachers deeply I just finally couldn’t commit to teaching English. I wish I could have found a cheaper way to do it though!

So I’m unbelievably happy. wowl

Ah where have I been? I have been enjoying the hell out of the swine flu. I’ve had fever and barfing and all sorts of horrible other things for the past almost week. I’m still so fatigued I can barely move.

We’re so behind on Xmess I don’t know how we’ll catch up.

The very good thing and if I had even an ounce more energy I’d go on and on about it, is I have a new job. Start in January. I’ll say more when I sign the papers, just superstitious that way. It’s exciting, what I want to be doing and exactly what I have the ability and passion to do. It took awhile to come back to this line of work–until I figured out it was working for salesman that was the problem.

Sigh. I want to write more but I’m exhausted and have to figure out how to catch up on Xmess.

August09_1673 (Medium)

Originally uploaded by jyllianm

A most adorable morning watching cartoons.
Girl cats are usually not too affectionate, but Bean has special powers

There are reasons I like facebook. This being posted is one.

“I was doing an interview with Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche recently, and I asked him the question: “Rinpoche, you have been living in the west for some time now, and you know western people well. What do you think is the most important advise you could give to a western dharma practitioner?”

And he said “I think the most important thing that western dharma practitioners need to understand is guiltlessness.”

I said “guiltlessness?”

He said “Yes. You have to understand that even though you make a lot of mistakes and you mess up in all kinds of ways, all of that is impermanent and shifting and changing and temporary. But fundamentally, your mind and heart are not guilty. They are innocent.”

So guiltlessness is very important in the subject of dissolving or burning up the seeds of aggression in our own hearts and our own minds.

Most of the striking out at other people, for us in this culture, comes from feeling bad about ourselves. It makes us so wretched and so uncomfortable that it sets off the chain reaction of trying to get away from that feeling. It’s some very very habitual thing that happens.

If you got hooked, and then someone was to give you four seconds, or a minute, and then tap you on the shoulder and ask you what that feels like, it feels really bad, it feels like “bad me” and the aggression is turned against yourself.

Maybe if you waited four minutes and tapped them on the shoulder, what it feels like is – they are really wrong, and they did this to me, and its their fault that I’m in this situation.

But somehow, if at that moment, you were to pause, and start breathing and let the whole thing unwind and unravel, and hang out in the impermanent yet ineffable space – if you were to do that you might realize that all of this blaming of other people, when you went into it deeper, you would see that the seed of it was really some deep discomfort and aggression about yourself.

And if you went more deeply into that, you would probably find sadness.

And I quote this so much, this Poem of Rick Fields, where he said:

Behind the hardness there is fear
And if you touch the heart of the fear
You find sadness (it sort of gets more and more tender)
And if you touch the sadness
You find the vast blue sky

This is really what I am encouraging is the next time you feel yourself hooked, if you pause and you breath with it, and you don’t act out and you don’t repress, but you think of this quote, and you think the ones that will create the new culture that is needed are those that are not afraid to be insecure.

Whatever it is that you think at that moment, maybe this is what it feels like to be burning up the seeds that have caused all the pain on this earth – this is what that feels like.

I always feel that somehow you have to reframe that bad feeling – so that you see it as a doorway to liberation, as an opening to the vast blue sky.

A teaching by Pema Chödrön
excerpted from a talk entitled “Practicing Peace in Times of War”
available from Shambhala Publications at:
http://www.shambhala.com/html/catalog/items/isbn/978-1-59030-414-3.cfm “

First random thing:

I would like to like the show Eastwick because

1) the redhead witch was on Eureka a show I love

2)The actor who plays Darryl the Satan character was in this WONDERFUL PBS/Sundance show called Slings and Arrows. Which I LOVED.

3) I adore the other redhead Sara Rue to distraction. She was in a great movie called Gypsy 83 that everyone should see. It is also nice to see her not being a blonde bobblehead anymore. I actually love Sara Rue more than the first chick, but I’m writing this as I watch the tivo so I went to her first. She’s written whedonesque.

Next random thing:

Babbage, our small kitten has an insatiable need to knock every single glass or cup over. And crawl up my nose at every available opportunity.

I made a website today for the thing I’d like to do:

http://www.etherhumanity.weebly.com

Still working on it.

I finished Feed

it wasn’t the story I thought it was, with the kids teaching themselves to read with emergency signs and manuals (must find that story again, it was good, possibly metafilter).

But it was goooooooood. And very topical and real. And I want to read more of him. I ignore banners and other net enticements, but the progression in this book is fully on point.

No really library tomorrow! I need more reading material. The sequels to Wicked Lovely and

Can I be an adult and be enthralled with YA lit? Well there are so many adult women who are crazy over Twilight, which I don’t get. I like bloodthirsty brooding wampires, not sparkling emos. But I saw the first movie and I’ll see this one. I justn don’t know if I can try and read the books again.

Now…the Hunger Games…Can’t wait to start THAT sequal. And the sequel to City of Bones

I’d really like to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie, because when Robert Downey Jr. isn’t on drugs, he’s an amazing actor–yes I liked Iron Man.

I made a very tasty dinner– Lovely pork chops (coleman’s mustard on both sides topped with paprika, salt. pepper, onions, apples and honey) and green beans sauteed with onions, breadcrumbs, and garlic. Yum. I missed having time to cook!

And I must finish the random notes for the day. This finishes it.

I have an interview or two or three. I have about 10 resumes out there, and have started getting positive responses back. I’m so excited to be going back to work. I did enjoy using my brain and effort in the M.A.T. program–I just didn’t like the fact that there was never any breathing space. None. You never got even one moment to savor an accomplishment. Not resting on laurels mind you, but just having a moment to enjoy a job well done.

We went to Nightbird books yesterday. Love that place. I like it even better in the new Dickson location. The books are more expensive than Borders, Barnes and Noble or Amazon but the atmosphere is excellent. I try to get at least one out of three books there. There is an excellent CHEESE sandwich restaurant called Hammontrees. James had a Jack to the future and I had the Scarlet Chedder. Um…Cheese is good. And this is extra cheese.

I’ve got some pictures somewhere, why? Because it is cheese. I’ll put them up in a bit.

Ah here they are (edited the morning after)

Edited–WHY did this post in January? Sheesh.

Today is world AIDs day. Get tested if you are at risk. Take care of yourselves–we’ve lost too many wonderful folk.

Planet 51 is a cute movie. J, Em and I went this weekend and it was so cool to just hang out with her without something hanging over my head.

Movie popcorn however, is quite evil. they now cook it in something that has more artificial flavor in it than it used to. Also–do not add the butter flavor, even a little. I was siiiiiiiiick. So no more movie popcorn for me.

Haru catten is getting more and more affectionate. Girlcats usually are more standoffish in my experience –they take awhile to warm up. So after about two years she is more snuggly.

Finally got my check for ACC. And the door closes.

And tomorrow I sit down and start writing.

Finished Wicked Lovely, would love to read the sequal.

Reading Feed, feel like I read that as a short story, will see when I finish up.

Got Catching Fire, the sequel to The Hunger Games.

Will hit the library tomorrow for another couple of books and maybe a manual or two on some new software. Might as well learn a new program or two while I have the time.

Well I did it. Finished one thing

And quit the M.A.T. I started off this month joking, somewhat. kind of about ’seeing how many times I wanted to quit.” Since I felt like the program was just too much. I didn’t understand how you could give everything the school work needed and everything your students needed and still have anything left for your family or yourself. And the answer is: YOU CAN’T.

I didn’t see giving up the next several years of family life (and my daughter’s life!) to teach other people’s children. However much I would like to be to others what my English teachers were to me–nothing, absolutely nothing is worth that. I really did enjoy those kids a lot, but I would never have had *any*time for my family, myself , that is, if I wanted to do it right, the way I knew how to do it right.

When I started trying to make this decision I read paper after paper on “why teach” and “leaving teaching.” I found so many about leaving teaching. All the things I’d had haunting the back of my mind were there in black and white. Too many classes, no time to grade, too much paperwork, stress after stress after stress. And finally–after some punative grading by a professor, a week when a huge paper was due, an uncomfortable placement (I never wanted to teach 9th grade (I do not enjoy diagramming sentences)I liked possibly 7th 8th, 10-12 I also really love elementary and middle school ages but maybe not for teaching English)some serious extra work I’d need to do to get ready,AND yet another licensing exam–well that was it. I’d still have two more tests to pass after that, another placement and 5 more classes and I’d have another class with that very odd man. Also, is there another profession where you have to pay to furnish your room in a reasonable way, pay for your student’s supplies and pay to take classes that may not help you? I kept noticing how much better it would be for teachers if they had MORE support staff. And then realized–that might be where I would be the happiest.

Because honestly–after having several close folks pass away in the last couple of years, well I don’t want to waste time being unhappy. I also do a better job when I’m basically content (it’s called work for a reason, but you can find good fits).

You know what else I found out–and it is something I can help to fix. It is something *I* could do to lessen the load–technology causes teachers huge headaches. I am really good at making tech work, finding what you need to do you job AND for explaining it all. And I admire and respect teachers–after all I know first hand what workloads they have! So I’m hoping that I can find a way to take this desire to well–be of service to education and use my powers for good!

I sure am leaving out a lot of adjectives I’d like to use.

Computers look REALLY good again. I am very good and would like to find a job where I can do my best, really excel but not have to give up my life to do it. There are so many things I’d love to try right now. I’d love to help people get to college somehow. I’d love to work on writing and tech. I’d love to work in education and technology. That got me very excited and at the Arkansas Curriculum Conference– I found myself answering questions from teachers all over the state about what was possible with current technology and how to work with the restrictions of the school systems and still get to use cool things like youtube.

I left a 70 hour a week job and I wanted to find a 40 or 50 hour a week job. I thought I could do that with teaching–not if I wanted to do it well. And I need to do my job well. I’ve learned that after many years. I also want to have a passion for my work. Is that crazy?

This wasn’t and easy decision, but it was the right one. Maybe if they make the requirements less onorous–for becoming and being a teacher, maybe…I was good. I was “a natural.” But I can’t give up my entire life for a job. Or my husband and daughter’s life with me. I hope I could find a way to help prevent that for other teachers–well in a small way that is why I volunteer wherever I can.

So that was this month. An implosion. Relief. Sadness, real sadness.

A new cat. Babbage–his tail is excessive, impudent and ridiculous. (he is the little black kitty. The big guy is Mr. Teatime.

New friends, hopefully that I’ll see more of. A new direction. Let’s hope this is the one I’ll be at for the next 20 years.