This morning I woke up at my first couch surfing host's home in a year. The day before that I woke up in my first hostel since last year. Right now I'm on a train to retrieve my car from my friend's house an hour outside the city.
I'm bouncing around like this because I didn't work while I was at home in New York, so I didn't get paid. I subleased in July and then went home on the first of August so I wouldn't have to pay rent anywhere. Thus the couch surfing, hostels and likely camping in the near future, until September when I imagine I will be subleasing again.
This week's theme in class inadvertently appears to be money. The vocab is about banking, the grammar keeps talking about looking for jobs when you can't get by or find something that makes full use of your skills, and the reading was about Detroit going bankrupt with no hope for the future.
Today I did a listening exercise by playing Wu-Tang Clan's "C.R.E.A.M." (Cash Rules Everything Around Me). It gave me an opportunity to explain slang, economic racial disparities in America, similes, onomatopoeia, the parallels between gangster rap and the history of the world, and distraction from the vibrating phone in my pocket which I knew was my student loan service bugging me (it's sorted out now, but the timing couldn't be beaten).
Then we read an article about the royal baby in England, and then another about nomads in the Balkans whose way of life will soon end because of borders caused by the war in Yugoslavia twenty years ago.
It's always good to keep things in perspective.
One of the lines from the grammar dialogue yesterday was, "You're young, healthy and educated. Don't lose hope."
I'll be fine. The poetry of life appears to be aligned. After all, how was I going to remember how to write about staying in hostels in India, couchsurfing, camping, and hitchhiking in America without getting a little refresher course? And the teaching in Japan... well, I get a reminder of that every day.
As Inspectah Deck says, "For now it's got to be accepted, that life is hectic."
Anyway, this morning Mark Palinski sent this poem out in his daily poetry e-mail, and it was the best way to start my day:
For the Young Who Want To
Last night I got an e-mail from my Japanese mother, Kazuko, for the first time since April. She told me she's making these new shirts that say "Daijobu" and wants to send one to me soon. I told her I would let her know my address as soon as I know my address.
An eye on the future reminds me that everything will be just fine. Then again, there's an exhibition of Japanese art at the Asian Art Museum a block away from where I work, and it's called "In the Moment," which I suppose is the only place to truly be.
I'm bouncing around like this because I didn't work while I was at home in New York, so I didn't get paid. I subleased in July and then went home on the first of August so I wouldn't have to pay rent anywhere. Thus the couch surfing, hostels and likely camping in the near future, until September when I imagine I will be subleasing again.
This week's theme in class inadvertently appears to be money. The vocab is about banking, the grammar keeps talking about looking for jobs when you can't get by or find something that makes full use of your skills, and the reading was about Detroit going bankrupt with no hope for the future.
Today I did a listening exercise by playing Wu-Tang Clan's "C.R.E.A.M." (Cash Rules Everything Around Me). It gave me an opportunity to explain slang, economic racial disparities in America, similes, onomatopoeia, the parallels between gangster rap and the history of the world, and distraction from the vibrating phone in my pocket which I knew was my student loan service bugging me (it's sorted out now, but the timing couldn't be beaten).
Then we read an article about the royal baby in England, and then another about nomads in the Balkans whose way of life will soon end because of borders caused by the war in Yugoslavia twenty years ago.
It's always good to keep things in perspective.
One of the lines from the grammar dialogue yesterday was, "You're young, healthy and educated. Don't lose hope."
I'll be fine. The poetry of life appears to be aligned. After all, how was I going to remember how to write about staying in hostels in India, couchsurfing, camping, and hitchhiking in America without getting a little refresher course? And the teaching in Japan... well, I get a reminder of that every day.
As Inspectah Deck says, "For now it's got to be accepted, that life is hectic."
Anyway, this morning Mark Palinski sent this poem out in his daily poetry e-mail, and it was the best way to start my day:
For the Young Who Want To
Last night I got an e-mail from my Japanese mother, Kazuko, for the first time since April. She told me she's making these new shirts that say "Daijobu" and wants to send one to me soon. I told her I would let her know my address as soon as I know my address.
An eye on the future reminds me that everything will be just fine. Then again, there's an exhibition of Japanese art at the Asian Art Museum a block away from where I work, and it's called "In the Moment," which I suppose is the only place to truly be.
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