On Sunday mornings my father took me and my brother and sister to the congregational church. The "Congo" church as he called it, and I thought of Africa. But everybody was from Wisconsin. So that couldn't be right. I later learned that a congregational church is a church with no denomination. Anyone is welcome, and you don't have to be a part of a particular group, or believe in a particular way. I didn't like going. This I believed; that it was boring, and so I met the requirement. Instead of sitting in the pews with my father and siblings, I opted for Sunday school, an opportunity to hang out with other kids.

Because Sunday school started an hour before church, I never got to see the last ten minutes of Jem and the Holograms. I also didn't get to eat Pillsbury biscuits and eggs. Instead I sat at the two low tables pushed together with the other kids. The Sunday School teacher talked about the bible for forty-five minutes, and then we went up stairs to a little room above the main chapel and sang. I didn't know anybody, and they didn't know me. I just tried to get through the hour and a half without attracting attention so I could be done with it. Had I chosen to go to real church, my dad would of made me interact. On my own, mingling was not an issue.

One morning I wore a Gumby basketball sweatshirt I had gotten from my aunt. I thought it was pretty cool, especially since the small town kids weren't hip to Gumby. I had a snotty cold that morning, and when I sneezed a wad of yellow sticky snot came out of my nose and stuck to my fingers. Too shy to get up or ask the teacher to get a tissue, I wiped the snot in the armpit of the shirt and tucked my arm in like a chicken wing. I assumed nobody saw me because I assumed everybody was in the same boat as me, just trying to get through. We continued singing but I heard some of the kids laugh. One of them said, "Gumby got gummed." I pretended they were talking about something else.

Grace standing on the corner talking about refusing to work for peanuts. Me in a short sleeve with the wind blowing. Shivering. Her private teaching practice earns her five times what she makes working for our school. Suzie Orman and the virtue of not selling yourself for less than you're worth. I left the street corner and descended into the BART, wondering if I got it wrong. If my ideas of what's important are a perfect example of the Nietzscheian "slave mentality," to put off dignity because, as Sarah Palin put it, "your reward is in heaven."

Or as Cannibal Ox put it, "the meek shall inherit the earth / why not? / we can sell it to the frail / and feed em fairy tales." Being taken advantage builds character. And according to Grace, eventually some of us learn this lesson well enough to take advantage of the situation ourselves. The wisdom of misery. A former teacher wrote me back about the recommendation request: hard up for time but if you send me a bio I'll write you one. One draws the line. Time is precious. Joel says to me on the phone, "I wasn't asking for your permission to bring the dog."

In conversation with one of the department heads last week I talked about streamlining my methods to keep up with the work load: no more than ten minutes a student paper. The kind of gains in efficiency politicians dream of when they cut budgets. I mentioned this in the context of teaching full time, that I'd love to but couldn't keep up with the work load. In response she said that full timers get by because they don't agonize over one student or another. And again, this strange desire to suffer comes back into the conversation. No answers.

Semester started yesterday. One rhetoric class that meets on Tuesdays and Friday. Today I have writing lab and the 'special' pronunciation group where we read dialogues. I'm not really sure if it helps improve pronunciation but it probably doesn't hurt. Plus it's kind of fun. I found a copy of Raymond Carver's short stories called What We Talk About When We Talk About Love that I've been reading on the BART train, and was thinking of using it for the pronunciation group. Pretty amazing, and also pretty bleak. Spare and unadorned. I started to write out a line from the book but then erased it thinking it wouldn't make any sense outside of the context of the story, and might make me seem like a violent misogynist. Knowing nothing about Raymond Carver other than a lot of writing is described as "Carver-esque", it's very possible that he was just that, but I refuse to read a wikipedia entry about him right now so if you know better please, with grace, allow this sentence to pass.

But mostly the stories are about sadness and relationships falling apart: affairs, sickness, disappointment, booze, violence, fathers, mothers, and divorcees. The kind of short stories, really short stories that thud with the last line and make you want to go back and re-read the details. I have to admit that it's a little hard to write at this moment. Like squeezing toothpaste out of a mangled tube. The last ten days of the break I didn't do any writing at all. On Sunday I went to see The Tree of Life, the new Terrance Malick movie that happens to have Brad Pitt in it. When I spell check Malick it suggest Metallica. Ride the lightning. But it was kind of an amazing movie. The rare movie that when somebody asks, was it good? The question doesn't really apply, because it's not really a movie. At least not in a narrative sense, though there is a narrative, but it's not really what the two some hours in the theater are about. I hate to say it but it's more like a poem than a movie.

The first five minutes are worth the price of admission and if you throw in the scene with the dinosaurs (!) you're already in the bonus land of speculative pleasure. In other movie news I also saw the movie Super 8 during the last couple weeks of the break, and I can't remember three things about it. Though I can remember two things: train crash, alien eyeball. More than that I remember how delicious the nectarine was that I ate while watching it. I'll stop there because I need to get some things together and put my socks on. The best part about this semester is that unlike last semester I have a lot of time to write. Looking forward to remembering why I do all this in the first place.

Washington DC. It's supposed to get up to ninety-eight degrees today, and humid. It's hot, but the heat is a novelty. For the first time in my life I am rooting for a Texas team. Tomorrow it's back to California, what I've heard has been rainy. Rainy Briggs. Third and Fifth grade and saw him working at a hat store about eight years ago. Feel like we were friends though never spoke or paid attention to each other. Race relations. Lincoln Elementary school, bussed across the city like they do in San Francisco. Forced mingling win the lottery no choice but a chance. Sitting in a cafe just did some copy editing. Twenty-five dollars and hour. Should ask for more. Bagel and egg and cheese and cranberry lemonade out of a bottle. There is no I in team. They didn't charge for the bagel. Stealing is wrong. Stealing is against the law. Bank robbery is punishable by twenty years in a federal prison. Phillip Glass. Mishima.On Monday we went to the beach. My new nephew James is cute. Like a larvae. Not really capable of much but can smile a little and look. Accompanied my niece to music class yesterday. Humiliating. Don't want to talk about it. Personal blog.

Need to get back to work. Am really not into computers these days. Rant: people get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to make baubles for iPhones while thousands of teachers are laid off. Really smart and clueless people. Man its hot. What is this world coming to? Save the whales. Know thyself Thales. Tagline at the end of an email. Was going to teach on-line this summer but took too long in getting back to the powers that be. Bummer. Would of freed up my Monday. Three day weekend boyeeee. Georgetown. Look up and out from the window a cafe. Planning on visiting the bookstore that I don't know is still open or not. Internet. Sit at the window with a bag of chips and diet coke. Someone else. Not me. Caffeine free. Caffeine free all natural soda. Caffeine free all natural cherry flavored soda. Keep drinking. Snake it back. Lifeline. Would you like to call a friend? The soda machine was all out of cherry coke. That should be capitalized. Do not turn left in in front of this vehicle. UPS trucks rarely turn left. Recalculating route.

At the beach the Eastern shore of Maryland we stopped for some food before the three hour drive back to DC. The name of the restaurant along the boardwalk was Gus' Fried Chicken and the owners were Greek and they served fried chicken. I've been trying to avoid meat. At the table next to us we were sitting in a booth two over weight ladies and an overweight man sat down. The lady with the blond hair teased out said "I'll just have a cheese burger with bacon." I keep thinking of that, the word "just." And the expression on her face. She looked resigned. On my way here there was a group of little school kids trying to cross. Cars kept whizzing by so one of the teachers went out in the middle of the street to try and stop the cars. They stopped and a man got out of one of the cars and said "what the fuck?" Since I used that opportunity to cross the street as well and was close, I said to the man, "Dude. It's just a bunch of kids. Relax." Just. Back out into the heat I go. See you in California.