Wednesday I get drinks with friends. Life is good.
Thursday we laugh in the TOEFL class, even though we are learning about how to beat a standardized test. Sometimes the topics are very interesting, at least to me, because I'm not the one fretting about taking the exam. I just have to prepare them and improve their English. I especially enjoy the listening about handling bears in Glacier Park in Montana (page 263).
My favorite student, a fashionable German woman my age, buys us all donuts on her final day. I tell her it was totally fun teaching her for a year, and thank her for challenging me so many times. She responds in kind, and wants to read my next book. Now I'll have to depend on my knowledge-seeking, hijab-wearing Egyptian mother of three to answer the tough questions when everyone else is stumped, or to go on nerdy rants to demonstrate her open-mindedness and love of intellectualism.
In the afternoon class, we learn and laugh. The day before, the best female volleyball player in Kosovo says she is impressed that I remember all 19 of my students' names. I tell her it's my job. Then, to show off, and because the theme is law and order, I give everyone a selection of gangster names to choose from, tell them that those will be their names until the completion of Unit 5, and I memorize them as quickly as I can.
Within half an hour, I can reel them all off, and the doctor from Guinea/Belgium leads a standing ovation (well, a few stand, the rest are nice enough to clap). I remember all their names when they arrive on Thursday as well. "Good afternoon Cadillac, Sharkie, Queen Bee, Diamond, Kitty, Ice, The Boss, The Godfather, Red Hot, Baby Blue, Rosie, Brooklyn, T-Bone, Ruby, Pearl, Kingpin, Bambi, Books, Bones..." The latter already asks us to call him "Bobo," but he's looking down at his book and doesn't respond when I call him "Bones." So I say, "Bobo, Bobo, Bobo Bones." Soon I'm teaching about the George Thorogood song "Bad to the Bone," which is one of the few guitar riffs I was ever capable of learning. When they ask for my name, the best names left are The Mad Hatter and The Don. I go with the latter. Even so, I ask them to call me Ben.
Brooklyn, that is, Andreza from Brazil, gives me a chocolate egg for Easter. I joke that I'm 33 and I hope to live past Good Friday, but if I do, I'll share the egg with my family. After all, when I ate some fantastic fungus before walking barefoot around that pyramid-shaped gopura temple in Thanjavur in southern India, the woman with the bindi had come up to me and said, "You look like (that guy)," and I'd laughed.
Then, nervously recalling Life of Brian, I'd asserted, "Yes, but I'm not (that guy)."
And she'd responded with a smile, "Yes, but you LOOK like him," and went on her way.
In southern India, (that guy) has long blond hair and a red beard, I guess thanks to Portuguese colonization and their creative interpretations of history/mythology. There are photos of him all around Kerala, where I'd been before Thanjavur. In fact, there was one in the hotel where we stayed, and the old Indian man kept pointing to it when he saw me. When we said good bye after a few days stay, he gave us hugs. When he hugged me, he slowly reached down and grabbed a handful of both of my butt cheeks (MeToo?).
Now, just to hedge my bets to live a good long life (and avoid being groped by very friendly, lonely, elderly Indian hotel stewards), on top of eating beans, vegetables, getting some exercise, laughing, spending time near water, trees, and loved one's, I've also been extra careful not to reject my parents, stay friends with a couple money lenders and admit their spiritual potential (after all, an investment banker who wrote an article about Mexican mushrooms made them popular in the US), applaud all manner of ways in which women choose to express their sexuality whether conservatively or promiscuously, reject lifelong celibacy and refrain from claiming to be the way and the light.
I take a few hours in Harlem to get ready to go home for the weekend, as it always takes me a few hours to recharge before the drive. I get on the road around 9:15, and apparently everyone else in New York has the exact same idea, and it takes a while to get past the Palisades. Then it's easy, especially because I have this amazing Spotify playlist introducing me to works from Pat Metheny, Keith Jarrett, and various other jazz artists, with many tunes by my favorite, Hiromi. I get home at 12:34.
Life gives me 10 hours of sleep, which is much better than being awoken early by a construction buzz saw on Broadway.
When I come downstairs my mother greets me for the first time since early February, and she's holding a bunch of books, with The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt on top. I eat breakfast, drink some Gyokuro, and when my dad wakes up from his nap, we tend to cover everything. Health, local friends' lives, world politics, the administration, gun laws, music, and so on.
I realize that the first song I can remember hearing may not have been The New Seekers' "Free to Be You and Me," but may instead have been any number of Irish tunes by Donnybrook Fair, especially "Get Up Jack." My parents remind me how I used to sing the lyrics as a toddler. Instead of "Hey Laddy-o, swing the capstan, round, round, round" I would say, "Hey Ratty-o, fing the wapstam rou, rou, rou!" Nancy Whiskey and Tunnel Tigers also ring a bell.
At one point in our long library conversation I'm saying that we have to learn from our elders while respecting the new lessons lived by youth, just like that lyric in "What a Wonderful World" where he says about the babies, "They'll all learn more than I'll ever know." Then we discuss whether or not Edith Piaf wrote the lyrics. My dad googles it and learns it was written by three guys whose names I haven't bothered to memorize. When we're debating something about guns and all the horrible tragedies of the world, my dad randomly interrupts and gives us more information about the creation of "What a Wonderful World."
I recall sitting on the front porch at 133 North Quarry Street in Ithaca on Wednesday afternoons my senior year of college, drinking whiskey with ice, inhaling some mother nature and feeling total zen while tapping my foot to T-Bone Walker's "Mean Old World," especially that intro. I'd have to admit that if I had to choose one, I would go with wonderful world, but mean world helps us create and appreciate that which is wonderful, and balance is our key to universal destiny.
Then we watch the news (PBS of course). After one program I decide I'm not quite as old as my parents and that one news show is enough for me. I take a half hour walk by light of a full moon, almost trip over some rolled up wire fence and wooden stakes on the edge of a cornfield, enjoy the spring frogs making their music, and then come back in time for some PBS round table discussion of the "MeToo" moment.
We plan on watching "Dylan: Unplugged" but it turns out PBS has this "Soundbreaking" series about the role of production in music. We watch three hours, and are still at it as I write this, which is way past my dad's bed time. My favorites so far are learning about Elvis/Howlin' Wolf/B.B. King at Sun Records, Sly Stewart (and the Family), Pink Floyd, the production of "Tomorrow Never Knows," and "God Only Knows."
I am so thankful to participate, to be one of the ways and part of the light.
Thursday we laugh in the TOEFL class, even though we are learning about how to beat a standardized test. Sometimes the topics are very interesting, at least to me, because I'm not the one fretting about taking the exam. I just have to prepare them and improve their English. I especially enjoy the listening about handling bears in Glacier Park in Montana (page 263).
My favorite student, a fashionable German woman my age, buys us all donuts on her final day. I tell her it was totally fun teaching her for a year, and thank her for challenging me so many times. She responds in kind, and wants to read my next book. Now I'll have to depend on my knowledge-seeking, hijab-wearing Egyptian mother of three to answer the tough questions when everyone else is stumped, or to go on nerdy rants to demonstrate her open-mindedness and love of intellectualism.
In the afternoon class, we learn and laugh. The day before, the best female volleyball player in Kosovo says she is impressed that I remember all 19 of my students' names. I tell her it's my job. Then, to show off, and because the theme is law and order, I give everyone a selection of gangster names to choose from, tell them that those will be their names until the completion of Unit 5, and I memorize them as quickly as I can.
Within half an hour, I can reel them all off, and the doctor from Guinea/Belgium leads a standing ovation (well, a few stand, the rest are nice enough to clap). I remember all their names when they arrive on Thursday as well. "Good afternoon Cadillac, Sharkie, Queen Bee, Diamond, Kitty, Ice, The Boss, The Godfather, Red Hot, Baby Blue, Rosie, Brooklyn, T-Bone, Ruby, Pearl, Kingpin, Bambi, Books, Bones..." The latter already asks us to call him "Bobo," but he's looking down at his book and doesn't respond when I call him "Bones." So I say, "Bobo, Bobo, Bobo Bones." Soon I'm teaching about the George Thorogood song "Bad to the Bone," which is one of the few guitar riffs I was ever capable of learning. When they ask for my name, the best names left are The Mad Hatter and The Don. I go with the latter. Even so, I ask them to call me Ben.
Brooklyn, that is, Andreza from Brazil, gives me a chocolate egg for Easter. I joke that I'm 33 and I hope to live past Good Friday, but if I do, I'll share the egg with my family. After all, when I ate some fantastic fungus before walking barefoot around that pyramid-shaped gopura temple in Thanjavur in southern India, the woman with the bindi had come up to me and said, "You look like (that guy)," and I'd laughed.
Then, nervously recalling Life of Brian, I'd asserted, "Yes, but I'm not (that guy)."
And she'd responded with a smile, "Yes, but you LOOK like him," and went on her way.
In southern India, (that guy) has long blond hair and a red beard, I guess thanks to Portuguese colonization and their creative interpretations of history/mythology. There are photos of him all around Kerala, where I'd been before Thanjavur. In fact, there was one in the hotel where we stayed, and the old Indian man kept pointing to it when he saw me. When we said good bye after a few days stay, he gave us hugs. When he hugged me, he slowly reached down and grabbed a handful of both of my butt cheeks (MeToo?).
Now, just to hedge my bets to live a good long life (and avoid being groped by very friendly, lonely, elderly Indian hotel stewards), on top of eating beans, vegetables, getting some exercise, laughing, spending time near water, trees, and loved one's, I've also been extra careful not to reject my parents, stay friends with a couple money lenders and admit their spiritual potential (after all, an investment banker who wrote an article about Mexican mushrooms made them popular in the US), applaud all manner of ways in which women choose to express their sexuality whether conservatively or promiscuously, reject lifelong celibacy and refrain from claiming to be the way and the light.
I take a few hours in Harlem to get ready to go home for the weekend, as it always takes me a few hours to recharge before the drive. I get on the road around 9:15, and apparently everyone else in New York has the exact same idea, and it takes a while to get past the Palisades. Then it's easy, especially because I have this amazing Spotify playlist introducing me to works from Pat Metheny, Keith Jarrett, and various other jazz artists, with many tunes by my favorite, Hiromi. I get home at 12:34.
Life gives me 10 hours of sleep, which is much better than being awoken early by a construction buzz saw on Broadway.
When I come downstairs my mother greets me for the first time since early February, and she's holding a bunch of books, with The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt on top. I eat breakfast, drink some Gyokuro, and when my dad wakes up from his nap, we tend to cover everything. Health, local friends' lives, world politics, the administration, gun laws, music, and so on.
I realize that the first song I can remember hearing may not have been The New Seekers' "Free to Be You and Me," but may instead have been any number of Irish tunes by Donnybrook Fair, especially "Get Up Jack." My parents remind me how I used to sing the lyrics as a toddler. Instead of "Hey Laddy-o, swing the capstan, round, round, round" I would say, "Hey Ratty-o, fing the wapstam rou, rou, rou!" Nancy Whiskey and Tunnel Tigers also ring a bell.
At one point in our long library conversation I'm saying that we have to learn from our elders while respecting the new lessons lived by youth, just like that lyric in "What a Wonderful World" where he says about the babies, "They'll all learn more than I'll ever know." Then we discuss whether or not Edith Piaf wrote the lyrics. My dad googles it and learns it was written by three guys whose names I haven't bothered to memorize. When we're debating something about guns and all the horrible tragedies of the world, my dad randomly interrupts and gives us more information about the creation of "What a Wonderful World."
I recall sitting on the front porch at 133 North Quarry Street in Ithaca on Wednesday afternoons my senior year of college, drinking whiskey with ice, inhaling some mother nature and feeling total zen while tapping my foot to T-Bone Walker's "Mean Old World," especially that intro. I'd have to admit that if I had to choose one, I would go with wonderful world, but mean world helps us create and appreciate that which is wonderful, and balance is our key to universal destiny.
Then we watch the news (PBS of course). After one program I decide I'm not quite as old as my parents and that one news show is enough for me. I take a half hour walk by light of a full moon, almost trip over some rolled up wire fence and wooden stakes on the edge of a cornfield, enjoy the spring frogs making their music, and then come back in time for some PBS round table discussion of the "MeToo" moment.
We plan on watching "Dylan: Unplugged" but it turns out PBS has this "Soundbreaking" series about the role of production in music. We watch three hours, and are still at it as I write this, which is way past my dad's bed time. My favorites so far are learning about Elvis/Howlin' Wolf/B.B. King at Sun Records, Sly Stewart (and the Family), Pink Floyd, the production of "Tomorrow Never Knows," and "God Only Knows."
I am so thankful to participate, to be one of the ways and part of the light.
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