romance of the kudzu

a weekend in amherst for a wedding (michael page 'o5 to hilary plum '03). all the things i had just moved into the passive came riding high on little sleep and mislead eros. at the moment where the self had thought to settle in mississippi - where the green had started to grip at my shins - i flooded it with a fantasy of still-warm memories.

strangely enough, i feel a bit deadened. not too motivated to prepare for another big lesson tomorrow (detailed in editor's note #2), not too motivated to negotiate these very early, very tenuous, very touch-and-go, very political relationships (hell, i just spent two days arm in arm with a score of people whom i'm passionately in love with), not too motivated to get some dinner.

anyway, kudzu is perfect on the highway.

p.s. i feel kind of bad that i'm slipping into the oft-familiar angsty blogger voice - which is, not unsurprisingly, an easy companion to the exhausted teacher voice [note: it's true, it's been about two weeks now; what do i know about being an exhausted teacher?] i'll work on bringing out the smiling dave voice.

**

editor's notes -

(1) basic structure of last blog entry came from an e-mail to my advisor at amherst - writer-in-residence daniel hall.

he adds,

"Corporal punishment in public schools: imagine. I did check your blog, but I didn't see the most persuasive argument against it, namely that the lesson children learn from being hit is that the way to keep people--or nations, for that matter--in line is through physical force. (It may be in there somewhere; I don't have much patience with blogs, because the wheat to chaff ratio is so low. Take a look at Margaret Cho's blog: there's hardly a laugh to be found.)"

(2) i read "letter from a birmingham jail" for the first time last week (i'm going to try and do a lesson on it tomorrow - semicolons, rhetoric, and the conflict of dr. king). lit me on fire. the writing keeps pace easily with the stronger moments of emerson and montaigne - though with a calm sense of the law pulling truth brilliantly at all angles. anyway,

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds. "

" I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "An Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this 'hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. "

etc.