*Whew* I am NOT called to be a Kindergarten teacher. I didn't even have to be there the whole day, and still I'm all tuckered out.

Happy quote from the evening: as Jonathan was leaving he said, "I'm only going to say good-night like this 46 more times."
Yay. :-)

I found this on Tim Bartel's resume on Bubbs, read it, and was thoroughly, thoroughly impressed. If you have the time, I highly recommend you read it. Chesterton may at his best in short works like this.

A Piece of Chalk

By: G. K. Chesterton

I remember one splendid morning, all blue and silver, in the summer
holidays when I reluctantly tore myself away from the task of doing
nothing in particular, and put on a hat of some sort and picked up
a walking-stick, and put six very bright-colored chalks in my pocket.
I then went into the kitchen (which along with the rest of the house,
belonged to a very square and sensible woman in a Sussex village), and
asked the owner and occupant of the kitchen if she had any brown paper.
She had a great deal; in fact she had too much; and she mistook
the purpose and the rationale of the existence of brown paper.
She seemed to have an idea that if a person wanted brown paper he must
be wanting to tie up parcels; which was the last thing I wanted to do;
indeed it is a thing which I have found to be beyond my mental capacity.
Hence she dwelt very much on the varying qualities of toughness and
endurance in the material. I explained to her that I only wanted to draw
pictures on it, and that I did not want them to endure in the least;
and that from my point of view, therefore, it was a question, not of
tough consistency, but of responsive surface, a thing comparatively
irrelevant in a parcel. When she understood that I wanted to draw
she offered to overwhelm me with note-paper, apparently supposing
that I did my notes and correspondence on old brown paper wrappers
from motives of economy.

I then tried to explain the rather delicate logical shade, that I
not only like brown paper, but I liked the quality of brownness
in paper, just as I liked the quality of brownness in October woods,
or in beer, or in the peat-streams of the North. Brown paper
represents the primal twilight of the first toil of creation,
and with a bright-colored chalk or two you can pick out points of fire
in it, sparks of gold, and blood-red, and sea-green, like the first
fierce stars that sprang out of divine darkness. All this I said
(in an off-hand way) to the old woman; and I put the brown paper
in my pocket along with the chalks, and possibly other things.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical
are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife,
for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword.
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things
in my pockets. But I found it was too long and the age of great
epics is past.

With my stick, my knife, my chalks, and my brown paper, I went
out on to the great downs. I crawled across those colossal
contours that express the best quality of England, because they
are at the same time soft and strong. The smoothness of them
has the same meaning as the smoothness of great cart-horses,
or the smoothness of the beech-tree; it declares in the teeth
of our timid and cruel theories that the mighty are merciful.
As my eye swept the landscape, the landscape was as kindly
as any of its cottages, but for power it was like an earthquake.
The villages in the immense valley were safe, one could see,
for centuries: yet the lifting of the whole land was like
the lifting of one enormous wave to wash them all away.

I crossed one swell of living turf after another, looking for a place
to sit down and draw. Do not, for heaven's sake, imagine I was going
to sketch from Nature. I was going to draw devils and seraphim,
and blind old gods that men worshipped before the dawn of right,
and saints in robes of angry crimson, and seas of strange green,
and all the sacred or monstrous symbols that look so well
in bright colors on brown drawing paper. They are much better
worth drawing than Nature; also they are much easier to draw.
When a cow came slouching by in a field next to me, a mere artist might
have drawn it; but I always get wrong in the hind legs of quadrupeds.
So I drew the soul of the cow; which I saw there plainly walking
before me in the sunlight; and the soul was all purple and silver,
and had seven horns and the mystery that belongs to all beasts.
But though I could not with a crayon get the best out of the landscape,
it does not follow that the landscape was not getting the best out of me.
And this, I think, is the mistake that people make about the old
poets who lived before Wordsworth, and were supposed not to care
very much about Nature because they did not describe it much.

They preferred writing about great men to writing about great hills;
but they sat on the great hills to write about it. They gave out
much less about Nature, but they drank it in, perhaps, much more.
They painted the white robes of their holy virgins with the blinding snow,
at which they had stared all day. They blazoned the shields of
their paladins with the purple and gold of many heraldic sunsets.
The greenness of a thousand green leaves clustered into the live
green figure of Robin Hood. The blueness of a score of forgotten
skies became the blue robes of the Virgin. The inspiration went
in like sunbeams and came out like Apollo.

But as I sat scrawling these silly figures on the brown paper,
it began to dawn on me, to my great disgust, that I had left
one chalk, and that a most exquisite and essential chalk, behind.
I searched all of my pockets, but I could not find any
white chalk. Now, those who are acquainted with philosophy
(nay, religion) which is typified in the art of drawing
on brown paper, know that white is positive and essential.
I cannot avoid remarking here on a moral significance.
One of the wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art reveals,
is this, that white is a color. It is not a mere absence of color;
it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red,
as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows
red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars.
And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best
religious morality, of real Christianity, for example,
is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious
morality is that white is a color. Virtue is not the absence
of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid
and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.
Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge
or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun,
which one has either seen or not seen. Chastity does not mean
abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming,
like Joan of Arc. In a word, God paints in many colors;
but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily,
as when He paints in white. In a sense our age has realized
this fact, and expressed it in our sullen costume. For if it
were really true that white was a blank and colorless thing,
negative and non-committal, then white would be used instead
of black and grey for the funeral of this pessimistic period.
We should see city gentlemen in frock coats of spotless
silver linen, with top hats as white as wonderful arum lilies.
Which is not the case.

Meanwhile, I could not find my chalk.

I sat on the hill in a sort of despair. There was no town
nearer than Chichester at which it was even remotely probable
that there would be such a thing as an artist's colorman.
And yet, without white, my absurd little pictures would have been
as pointless as the world would be if there were no good people in it.
I stared stupidly round, racking my brain for expedients.
Then I suddenly stood and roared with laughter, again and again,
so that the cows stared at me and called a committee. Imagine a man
in the Sahara regretting that he had no sand for his hourglass.
Imagine a gentleman in mid-ocean wishing that he had brought
some salt water with it with him for some chemical experiment.
I was sitting in an immense warehouse of white chalk.
The landscape was made entirely out of white chalk.
White chalk was piled more miles until it met the sky.
I stooped and broke a piece off the rock I sat on; it did not
mark so well as the shop chalks do; but it gave the effect.
And I stood there in a trance of pleasure, realizing that this
Southern England is not only a grand peninsula, and a tradition
and a civilization; it is something even more admirable.
It is a piece of chalk.

The most interesting thing about the word lumber is what happens to it when you add a P to the front. It's a whole new word! And the "b" becomes silent! That's weird.

I had my first substitute teaching job yesterday. It was for a bilingual class of 1st graders at a La Habra school. I was a little worried about the bilingual part at first, but it turned out that most of them spoke English quite well, so that wasn't an issue. There were a few issues, though:

1. I had trouble finding the school, so I didn't get there until 15 minutes before class was supposed to start, leaving me very little time to look over the plans that the teacher left for me (but she DID leave plans, and very detailed ones too, so I was very thankful for that)

2. It rained. Soooo, recess was inside. And the kids were antsy.

3. I didn't know the kids names. And this will be true for every substitute job I have. But it makes classroom management more difficult.

4. It seemed like every few minutes somebody needed to use the bathroom! Sometimes it was like, "Hey, didn't you just use the bathroom half an hour ago?" But I didn't want to be a bathroom Nazi. I mean, they're only 1st graders, and maybe they really had to go. And you don't want to risk that, ya know? I think I'll work up some kind of system, though, so it doesn't happen quite that way again. I'm thinking about making or buying some kind of tokens that I can take with me. Each kid would get a few at the beginning of the day, and they'd have to pay one to use the restroom, or something. I could also take one away or reward another depending on behavior. And then at the end of the day, they could turn them in for...stickers...or a pencil...or something. I haven't figured it all out yet, but I think it'll be good to have a system of my own. The teachers all have their own systems, but it's weird to come in and try to work in a system that you're not familiar with.

5. This one kid cried and didn't want to get on his bus to go home, saying his mom was going to drive him in the car that day. But the buses were ready to go, and his mom still wasn't there. Another teacher came up and I explained the situation to her, and she took him by the hand and said she'd take care of it for me. That was nice. I hope it worked out ok!

Overall, I think I liked it! The kids were good, and the lessons were fun and well-received. Oh, and one little girl asked me if I'd be back the next day. I told her that she'd have her regular teacher then and she said, "Oh, but I wanted to bring you a flower!" That was cute.

The exciting thing about subbing is that you get a call at 6:20 in the morning if there's a job for you that day. I hope my roommates don't start hating me.

It's September and it's raining? Whoa!

Last night Libby and I enjoyed a beautiful display by nature, lightning splitting the sky far away with tree-ish tendrels and illuminating glows. We were standing outside her apartment, taking a break from a movie we were watching (Endless Summer II).

Finally we went back in, only to be surprised by the sound of a torrential downpour outside her window.

Funny weather, this!

I love it, and I love how it kept going and going. I woke up to thunder and lightning (and unfortunately warm and muggy temperatures) last night at around 1:00. And, on my way to work, lightning was still showing up in the West! Later, I drove around campus looking for rain gear for my crew, and lightning still flickered overhead, accompanied by powerful peals of thunder, that actually shook the elevator in Hope so much that it bumped the wall. I'm serious!

Of course, rain comes with all of its short comings. A storage unit off campus flooded, and so I spent a few hours today moving couches, dressers, tables, and an oven and fridge into another storage unit. And it took a really long time to get to work today. I got to Imperial and Santa Gertrudes around 7:55, and I didn't get to campus until 8:20. I ditched Imperial and Ocaso, and wandered South on surface streets to Foster.

Anyway, I'm pretty drained because of the stress of the storage unit, but I'm happy that we had some variety in our weather.

I forgot to post about Talk Like a Pirate Day yesterday! It was pretty much a non-event, anyway, though, which is too bad. Maybe next year we'll have a Talk Like a Pirate Day party. We totally should.

Arrrrrr....

Ahoy! It be Coming Soon...



...ye scurvy dogs!

About time...

It's about time that I finally posted. I don't have internet at my apartment yet, and so the only time I could ever post is at work.

I imagine that the problems with that practice are apparent.

I'm well moved in now to my new apartment. I have a refrigerator. Actually, I have two refrigerators, which is a long story. Only one of them is running, and only one of them is in the kitchen. The other is taking up space in my front room.

Less than two months until I get married, now, which is really good! Still too long of course, but to look on the bright side, I've now waited longer than I will wait still. And so, every minute that I wait adds to the minutes that I've waited, and takes from the minutes that I've not waited in such a way to tip the ratio in a more and more postiive direction!

I'm still working my way through the Brothers Karamazov. This book is taking me longer to read than any other book ever. But it's worth the piecemeal approach I've been able to give it. I've now reached the Prosecutor's speech.

Poor Mitya.

I love Alyosha.

That's probably enough for a brief update, right?

I've just returned from a nice walk. It's a splendid day, did you know? It's been cool, and there's a slight breeze. Summer is ending; autumn will be here soon. I approve. Autumn has always been my favorite time of year.

Whoa.

Something occurred to me today. It's pretty crazy, so if you're not already sitting down you really should. It came to me through a series of thoughts that I will lead you through. It has to do with Mootharts getting married. First, I thought about how my brother, Gabe, was 22 years old when he got married, and how I'll be 22 when I get married. That's kind of cool. Then I thought about how Gabe's birthday is in January and he was married in May, so he was 22 years old and 4 months. And my birthday is in July and I'm getting married in November. So, I'll be 22 years and 4 months. Crazy, huh? Well, that's not all, folks. Gabe's birthday is January 27, and he was married on May 25...making him 22 years and 4 months minus 2 days. Here's the kicker. My birthday is July 14, and I'm getting married on November 12. And that means I'll be exactly 22 years and 4 months minus 2 days.

I'll let that sink in.

Phillip and Abbey, you might as well start planning your own weddings, now that we know how to figure out exactly what day they'll happen!