April 27, 2012

Thunderstorms across the land, like the trailing hems of violent dancers.

White iris in the front yard, a cloud of them. Apricot and purple in the back yard.

David Nard is dead of a stroke. It is a shock; there was no mark of imminent mortality upon him.

One of the cleaning girls left her jacket behind. I hung it from the dining room lintel so I’d remember to return it, and the scent of cigarettes filled two rooms.

First hummingbird to the feeders by evening light.

The frog–or at least a frog–is already in the water gardens. I rejoice.

Gave two exams yesterday, peered at empty spaces in the grade book, as I do semester after semester, wondering what to do, wondering what they could be thinking. No simplicity, no number of repetitions of the requirements seems to be enough. Perhaps, as on TV, they expect to be saved from mundane failure at the last moment by discovering they’re a superhero or a concealed interplanetary princess. I’ve little room to talk myself, twisting the evidence in my mind to find them a pass, searching for ways they might have gotten the information without being in class, without writing the paper, trying to convince myself that they tested badly rather than just didn’t bother opening the book, trying not to compare them to their brilliant or diligent peers who somehow managed to do everything right. He was ill. Her parents are crazy. She couldn’t hear the instructions, maybe, past her earphones. He has a kind heart, so maybe these test scores don’t matter so much. I think I made a mistake by trying (irrespective of success) to do everything right in my own life. The energy, the concern go to those who screw up. I have to force my mind from wringing its hands over the weak students to rejoicing over the (more in number) successful ones. This is a kind of fault I don’t even know how to define. People think it’s harder, somehow, to screw up than to succeed. I detect that belief in myself. I turn off the computer and rest my brain.