May 29, 2016

Turbulent days, and less turbulent days. M did his best in my faculty record to spin in my favor my student’s irritation with me. I’m fighting the fight to make them courageous, to make them take control of their own education, to make them hear the material over the din of grade anxiety, but on all fronts I’m losing, or at least getting bad reviews. Rough bump. Like giving someone climbing lessons and expensive mountaineering gear and then hearing they bitched because I had not set them effortlessly atop the mountain. On the other hand, yesterday was the first day when I could feel improvement in my anemia. Though I wouldn’t use the word “strong,” I was much less weak. I did what on any day would be called heroic gardening, and never had to stop to rest or sleep, could breathe the whole time, did not have to crash into bed immediately afterward. Planted gingko and Japanese maple and mallow and hydrangea, dug up most of Stewart’s soulless backyard hostas.
   
One voice in the head says, “Your life has come to nothing,” while another, or perhaps the same one in a different mode half a minute later, makes plans and surges forward. We are not only a multitude, we do not communicate among ourselves.