To react and respond. To keep going or not at all. This kind of writing as a form a meditation, to watch thoughts come and go, to be able to shift between perspectives a sign of health; thus it becomes necessary to write through patches of doubt. Last Tuesday, almost half the class didn’t show and I found this…discouraging.

The goal is to respond, to not be caught up in a premeditated program or meaning but it comes back to this: what I would say to my class about last week, about anxieties about being too soft or permissive. Anxieties about not being a good teacher; about not being good. It’s almost as if my frustration with trying to solve for x is the problem, my relationship to “problems”.

There is a rhythm to my thoughts a particular length of the line. The other day I was talking with a friend about Nietzsche, this idea that tragedy is actually comedy if we distance ourselves. Instead, to push forward with our will “to power”, the thing in front of our mind but what N. doesn’t speak of is the clarity needed to realize this will.

For example the misguided push of the Nazis, a mistake in thinking one wants to rule the world; caught up in false images the tip of their tongue layered in neurosis and dirt, failed reconstruction and low self-esteem. That clarity does not come from a supreme vision but from the everyday, finally, testing and adjusting.

A seagull stretches its wings in the air, flaps twice and disappears from view. The brooding woman has now shifted into the sun a jacket over her head headphones in her ears. Now I’m thinking about the weekend, schoolwork and Sunday, going up to the headlands to visit a friend and the beach. I don’t know what else to say this seems like a good place to stop.