Algonquin Peak, Labor Day 2015

I found some old photos from a couple summers ago when I had the pleasure of climbing the second highest peak in New York State, Algonquin Peak in the Adirondack Mountain range.  I drove more than 2 hours from Cambridge, NY in the Jetta, which was having some trouble at the time.  The coolant system had been leaking, so I had to pull over every 20 minutes to pour water in the coolant tank.  I watched the sunset from the peak, and then made my way down the mountain mostly under cover of night.  I'd been careful to notice any other paths that had joined mine on the way up so that I wouldn't be confused on the way back, but I still missed a turn and found myself somewhat confused in the darkness.  Luckily, soon after I realized that I was most assuredly on different terrain from that which I'd walked up on, I saw a sign for the Adirondack Loj, where I'd parked, and it was only another 30 minutes before I emerged from the woods.  Of course, I had to keep filling the coolant tank on the two hour drive back to Cambridge.  The next day I drove back to Manhattan, with the top two peaks (I'd done Marcy in 2010) under my belt.

As for the name "Algonquin," they were the Native American tribe from southern Canada which had frequented the area centuries before.  The name either means "our relatives/allies of the fish-spearing place" or "they are good dancers."  Samuel de Champlain, after whom my favorite body of water is named, cultivated alliances with them while he was exploring the area.

Of course, there is also the famous "Algonquin Round Table," a group of New York City writers, actors and wits who would meet at the Algonquin Hotel in the Jazz Age. 

Plant some seeds

Watch them grow

I spent today walking around a farm in the snow, marveling at towering evergreen trees I'd planted with my father two decades ago, and conversing with my two favorite life teachers in front of a fireplace.  Thank you for this life I lead, you gorgeous universe

I've lived in Manhattan for almost four years.  I love to think of four year periods with some underlying theme as culminating with graduations and commencements.  Unfortunately, there are always final exams.  I still have another week to go before reaching the true milestone of being a hardened citizen of New York, New York, so I'll reflect more on the four at the end of the month.  That said, it's felt like finals.  Construction has been beeping, sawing and jack-hammering outside my window every day at 7:30 am since the weekend before Thanksgiving, and that includes weekends.  They even went until 3 am on a Thursday once.  Roommates haven't been that bad lately, but their behavior can be truly mind-boggling.  The trains are frustrating, but that's to be expected.  The news reminds you that you're lucky just to arrive at work at all.

Despite all of that, I give thanks every day.  It might come after lots of grumbling, but I'm always reminded that I'm lucky to be here and even luckier to lead the life I live.

When I went to work in the morning Thursday, I began the day with seven beautiful (inside and out) women who wanted to learn business English.  Eventually they were joined by 3 men who must enjoy sleeping later.  So I taught them vocabulary and grammar, but also about finance, 2008's situation, globalization's effect on the auto industry, and the history of international trade, starting with the Silk Road and Indian Ocean Trade.  And they cared!  And they asked questions!  And they gave their opinions and kept the discussion going!  They thanked me at the end, and gave me purpose in the process.

Afterward I taught the afternoon group of listening and speaking students.  I started this class 2 years ago.  Even though the people change, it feels like the same class has been going the whole time, kind of like the way your body switches out cells and atoms.  Every couple weeks somebody moves on to something else.  On Thursday, it was 3 students who finished with us.  One of them, a very generous professional from China, asked me tough questions ("how do you deal with criticism?", "how do you have energy after teaching 8 hours a day, and how do you prepare for class?" and "if you love music and sports and writing so much, why do you teach business in the morning?").

Then she embarrassed me by singing my praises in front of the class.  She'd been in the business class weeks before, and that class had squeezed it out of me that I'd published a book on Amazon four years ago.  I guess she read it, and I couldn't stop her from telling the other students about it (at least not before I could update the bank account information so that I actually get a buck whenever someone actually buys one!).

Another student, from Colombia, is much younger, 16 years old, but he's been checking in with us every other year since he was 12.  I doubt I'll still be there when he's 18, which is good because he'll probably be taller than I am by then.

Four years ago I made him read the ingredients on the sides of vending machine candy to see if he could pronounce the multi-syllabic scientific words.  Thursday I read the instructions on the side of a pain reliever he'd purchased to make sure he wasn't taking any conflicting medication.  The Brazilian surgeon seemed to think he'd be fine.

The third student, an Argentinian woman who had a French accent due to her recent studies in Paris, told me that I'd taught them more than just English, which echoed the words of my best student in San Francisco four years ago.  She said that other teachers in France had just taught her French, but I'd added so much to help her understand this new country where she was residing.  I'll always remember that she actually said that coming into my classroom was like entering Narnia.

After all of that, packing took a while, so I didn't get on the road until 10:30 pm.  I had a pleasant drive, and when I arrived at my parents' farm at 1:30 am, there was a thin layer of snow on the ground.  When I awoke at 11 am this morning, there was no beep from any Caterpillars on Broadway.  There weren't any sounds at all.  When I looked out the window at the farm fields, there were snow flakes floating through the air.

Happy holidays, indeed

Yes, I am thankful I'm still breathing, seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, feeling, moving all limbs and digits, learning, thinking, imagining, potent, hoping, growing, working, exploring, living, loving

Happy Birthday

I wish the greatest birthdays ever to my beloved sister and brother-in-law, Emily and Folke.  I have always been thankful for their love, wisdom and senses of humor, but this year I get to be thankful for their lil' Jacob as well.  Eventually I will meet him in Germany next year!

The journey in Asia commenced December 3, 2009.  That journey was about new lands, new peoples, new perspectives, new beauty, new states of mind.  I worked to overcome fear, learning of a new courage that was always inside of me, but waiting to ripen at the right moment.

December 4, 2009, after having been given many hints the 1st day, I truly learned why I should be very thankful for the life I am given, because I saw those who have not been given anything remotely resembling that which I have.

A year after that journey, I was on another journey, in my own country, but still in distant lands.  This day helps me remember how beautiful it is to come indoors after living outside in the freezing weather and hitching rides with strangers.

The same date in 2011 brings the memories of divine melody.

While reading today, I remembered how important it is to have imagination, curiosity and creativity.

I try being conscious of how lucky I am to have people in my life, even if I love solitude.

I am thankful for life, and thank you, universe, for this current life and ask for more love and more life added to mix with this flow, increasing the glory of wild peace, enthusiastic verse experience, flowing magic with musical love

I am so thankful to be given this animate stream, somehow still walking on the universal balance beam, smiling wide inside a living dream

I am thankful for my family, friends, students, teachers who have taught me, bosses who have guided me, colleagues who have assisted me, strangers I've met who have helped me, heroes, many of whom I have never met, who have inspired me, and all who work toward bringing healthy food, clean water, and a reasonable amount of safety to people such as living, breathing, walking, talking, moving, improving imagining I

I love you, Ezekiel & Hannah, Robert & Ann, Rose & Ezekiel, Thomas & Mary, Richard & Elizabeth, and John & Mary, John & Margaret, and Thomas, Andrew, and Andrew.  As for all the other names in the roots, I love you as well, every 1, whoever you were, for your living your lives in ways that gave the rest of us, including yours truly, this gift of amazing life.  I hope to make a beautiful environment for plucky souls (as you are whenever I am in your presence)

Always transform

Almost a decade ago, a hometown friend of mine pointed out to me, in a spirit of annoyance, that I was always declaring that such and such day we happened to be meeting up was actually a very profound and poetically important moment filled with symbolic richness and figurative depth, and that such excited grand pronouncements were getting old.

However, I've taken a month off from posting, so I figure it's time to annoy people with poetry again.

Thus, today at 5:30 I concluded 21 straight months of teaching the most advanced afternoon listening and speaking class at my language company.  Notice the qualifier "afternoon."  I'll actually be teaching it in the morning now, instead of business.  I will still be teaching in the afternoon as well, but this time, I'll be down at level 3, just like old times.

Basically, not that much is changing in the immediate future.  That said, they're on their way.  I've been thankful to have worked this past half year teaching a 9-5:30 schedule of only the most advanced students at my school, but I knew it couldn't last forever, and I knew I didn't want it to.  As I've said before, my life is in a decent stasis, but besides my own reading, learning, writing practice, teaching practice, and general self-improvement and enjoyment of life, my current career isn't taking me anywhere (that I can see at the moment).  There's no chance for promotion, and although I've been told I'm pretty good at what I do, I'm aware of the market rates for this type of job.  Also, other schools I've heard of tend to pay less, and to work at the ones that pay more, I'd have to spend lots of money and time getting extra certification so I could teach micro-managed classes where every single activity and grammar point is planned down to the minute (literally...trust me, I mean the word 'literally' literally).  If you're thinking about education in general, that sounds like a potentially reasonable strategy for teaching.  But when you don't make much more than the new fast food minimum wage in San Francisco, you don't get paid for preparation time and you're already teaching a full 8 hours a day, it's kind of hard to work up the energy to plan every minute of your lesson.  On top of that, the thing I love most about teaching is the magic and knowledge that arise from improvisation and going with the flow in the moment: a student brings up a topic, another student responds, I have an idea, and a new activity is born in an instant.  I have planned classes down to the minute in the past, and they never go well, because few things in life go as planned anyway.  I like to go into class knowing what I'm doing, but with plenty of wiggle room to change direction if I see fit.

Why am I bringing this up now?

Remember that candidate who promised he would be the "greatest jobs president on God's earth" or something to that effect?  Well, he became the president, and now I can tell you about some American occupations that are in jeopardy.  God: was he telling the truth about your creation?  I mean, if he actually creates thousands and thousands of jobs that aren't based on destroying the planet and quality of human health and life, then I guess I can't be that selfish about my impending vocational fate.  But as far as I can tell, the only thing that's changed on the job front is that the government has ordered embassies to approve fewer student visas and skilled worker visas, so our visa approvals have gone from 50% to 20%.  That means students who earnestly want to study with us are being denied by our own government.  You see, they don't want foreigners taking jobs from Americans.... so they need to take jobs away from Americans who teach foreigners.   Those guys making those decisions will be gone in a decade or so anyway, so I guess they don't care about the long-term gains of a pretty basic concept known as "intellectual capital."  America is "exceptional" not just because of our tradition of rhetoric about hopes, dreams, and miscegenation, but because immigrants, skilled workers and students who come to the U.S. are way more friggin' driven than we 'natives'!  They are over-represented in patents, and we could go all night about inventive, innovative, artistic, intellectual, and heroically brave contributions from immigrants.  What comes to  mind immediately?  Well, America had mostly stopped innovating a long time ago, with industry giants trading investments in research and development for short-term boosts in the value of their stock price so CEO's could cash in their stock options.  Luckily, there was an incredibly timely revolution in technology, communication and reality revolving around computers, and America happened to be very well positioned to capitalize.  America would have been crushed economically if it hadn't gotten a head start with computer innovation.  Who founded Intel?  A Hungarian refugee.  Who built up Apple into America's most valuable company?  The son of a Syrian graduate student.  Who the heck is Elon Musk?  Look it up.  Where are you from?  America?  Do most 'Americans' even know who Amerigo Vespucci was?

How can America be great again?  I advise our administration to open a freaking book and learn a little about how it was great.  It's a pretty simple formula: welcome talent from everywhere in the world, and eventually, inherent in the equation, you'll get the best innovations and progress.  If Hitler hadn't hated Jews, he might have conquered the world.  Instead, the (arguably) smartest German in history--and perhaps exhibit A if the Germans (or Jews) actually made a silly existential case in Universal Court for being the "master race" on Earth--also happened to be Jewish, so he left, because he didn't like the idea of being slaughtered.  This man, Einstein, gave his intelligence to another country, which, despite it's insane contradictions, was on the zig zag path toward human harmony.  He urged them to create an atomic bomb program, which created the most devastating weapon ever.  This weapon was used by our country against innocents mixed in with monsters through no fault of their own, and was never used against Hitler.  However, it ensured he would never have had a chance anyway.  Who have we turned away now, perhaps to use their intelligence against us?

These references to history are a simple reminder that these troubles we face at my company aren't that large, but the results of shameful decisions nevertheless.  Next session, on Monday, we're cutting many classes, and it's not just us.  The whole industry is suffering directly for lack of students.  Many teachers are losing their classes.  I am lucky for now, as I still have my normal schedule for another month, before I (theoretically) switch with another full-time teacher and teach at night for half the session.  We'll go over that bridge when we get there.  I'm not that thrilled about not only returning to nights and a split schedule, but also having a 2 hour round-trip evening commute to Queens as opposed to the 20 minute round trip commute I had at the Upper West Side up until 6 months ago, when I resented completing my day at 10 pm, just so I could earn enough money to have a room, food, health insurance and a little fun.  Luckily, I have a month before that happens, and some extra fire to push me toward my true goals in the writing realm, or whatever realm I'm moving into.  Today we read that comfort is the enemy of ambition, so perhaps this is the kick I needed.  I spent so long without stability that I've really relished any sense of it that I could get in the past few years.  Now that I've had it a while, I feel like I should be doing something more.

Last night I visited a friend in Washington Heights.  The last time I saw him, we were in India.  He's from Israel, but lives in Germany.  He's visiting New York City for a few weeks, and trying to get a Fulbright Scholarship to study jazz guitar in America.  He already has a masters.  I do remember him playing "Sweet Baby James" by a fire in Vattakanal the night before we all went our separate ways after two weeks traveling together.

I'd seen him briefly this past Sunday, and then on Wednesday he invited me to dinner.  He revealed it was Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah.  I knew it was a "I don't have to move my car for street cleaning holiday" the next day, but I'd forgotten why until he reminded me.  He cooked me food, we drank wine, and we reminisced and caught up.  I remembered aspects of travel and spirituality that had lain dormant for a long time.

The symbolic importance of all of this is that two years after we had last seen each other in India, I sent a message out on Facebook seeking any help I could get in landing a teaching job in Japan.  I didn't have any experience, but I thought I could do it well.  My friend from Israel responded, saying he'd met a traveler in India who'd later taught in Japan, and perhaps he could help me.  That same traveler/intermediary eventually connected me to a conversation club in Saitama, and my teaching journey began from there.

I would say I'm wondering if that career which began back then is about to conclude, but I'm not.  I never intended to teach ESL as a lifelong career, although I must say, it's hard to think of better ways to spend your day than to direct/guide helpful creative activities in a room full of people from different walks of life and various cultures.  Will my teaching career wrap up in a few months?  Current immigration policy trends are obviously cause for pessimism.  Even without that, in the story of life, scenery, characters and scripts must grow, move, expand, transform, and therefore, so must schedules, jobs and sometimes even locations.  If I've done anything in my adulthood, learning how to embrace change would have to be near the top of the list.  I'm not sure what's up ahead with English language teaching to international people.  I will always teach in some form, even if that form is writing, and I will always learn from people who have different life experiences.  It just might not be in a small classroom anymore.

I know you've heard similar claims from me before, so I understand your skepticism.  I didn't even think I'd be in this situation this long, but, looking back, as usual, it all makes sense.  So I know you'll believe the book when you see it.

We did final presentations as we always do.  A woman from Japan taught us why Japanese people are punctual (and then explained that she isn't very Japanese herself when a Chinese man pointed out that she's often late) and organized.  A Chinese woman taught us about their New Year's traditions.  A Colombian man taught us about a famous theater company he'd worked for in his home country.  A Hungarian woman taught us about her home nation.  A Polish woman taught us about her homeland.  A Swiss student taught us about opera singers (her father is famous, apparently), and then showed off her pipes for all of us.  I've taught her for 8 months, which have been very up and down.  At one point I had to debate with her whether or not the speed of light was actually faster than the speed of sound, and she has a Ph.D. in philosophy from a very respected university.  But I'm really happy she showed off her skills for us in the last thirty minutes of class.  Finally, a Chinese man taught us about ancient Chinese philosophy.  He wasn't the last act, but I enjoyed his the most.  Every mention of the I Ching and Qi Gong and Tao brought back too many memories to count.

My immediate future is in doubt, but it always is.  I just don't realize it all the time.  It's the same for you, whether you know it or not.  But now that I realize I have even more volatility than usual on the horizon, I take solace in the fact that it's already been a wild journey up to now, and I have plenty of stories to tell.

I hope people are ready to listen.  I'm aware they might not be.  That happens in class all the time.  When the students ignore you and keep talking, you yell a little louder.  If that doesn't work, you play with the lights.  That almost always gets their attention.  But if that still doesn't get them to be quiet and listen to you, you just yell, "Everybody shut up and listen to me!" and that usually gets some laughs.  And then I can tell them everything they need to know

The sun smiled

I just returned from two weeks of vacation, which is one week longer than the longest vacation I've taken at this job.

To reward me for my hard work, the universe gave me an awesome first week: a lake, my first ferry ride in ages, campfires, two Phish shows, and great feelings overall.  I actually got to swim in Lake Champlain, and then drive down to the city to see its favorite sons, Phish, play an amazing show in Manhattan the same day.  Three of my best friends were there, and two had never seen Phish before.

For my second week, the universe gave me a summer cold.  The night I arrived at my parents farm, I started to feel it.  Although I'm usually tired from work and somewhat cranky about the inevitables that go with living in New York City so that I was feeling "sick and tired" quite often, I almost never actually get sick.  I did for a couple days in February, and for a day a couple weeks ago.  So of course I'm laid up with a serious summer cold for seven days in a row to celebrate my second week of vacation.

Strangely enough, it may have been a blessing in disguise.

My number one goal for my vacation was to sleep, and I did.  In fact, I didn't do much of anything last week.

I also wanted to be out of the city.  With the exception of the Phish shows and some time with friends, mission accomplished.

My plan of hiking three mountains was foiled, but they'll still be there on weekends, and they would have just tired me out anyway.

The main reason I think this was a blessing in disguise is I started feeling good on Friday, and now I feel much better, so although I have to go to work, now I view it as getting to spend time with interesting people while finally feeling well again, instead of being miserable on a couch, surrounded by beauty but unable to participate in it.

And the best part about having a substitute for two weeks is how much certain students tell you they missed you.  I was initially nervous because I missed the first two weeks of a new session, and I had to win over some new people who had started the course getting used to another instructor.  But I had carryover students from the previous session, and although they admitted the other teacher was okay, they were very happy to see me again.  And the new students didn't seem to mind the change either.

Believe it or not, the subway even behaved itself today.

7/24/05

Southern culture (i.e. music/food/hospitality) = awesome

Southern "heritage" (i.e. slavery) = for God's sake!  Use your creativity to make a new symbol!