beulahbondo's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Catching up Hello hello my friends...it's been a while. Chalk my absence up to preoccupation with money troubles and, oh, I don't know what else. Just general preoccupation. Taught the little children art for three weeks. Nothing is cuter than a kindergartner who says, "You can call me Cotton Candy if you want." Okay! The fourth and fifth grade worked for three weeks on dreamscapes. They did beautiful work. Normally other people's dreams make me glaze over, and I really don't like "surrealism," but these kids are dreaming about giant Mickey Mouse hands shooting down into black holes, and their parents turning into giant clowns, and such. So starting tomorrow I am teaching English to high school students at a medium-schmanzy school that takes sports much more seriously than I ever did. They also take English much more seriously than I ever did...I'm a little intimidated. I went to a medium-crappy high school, and an okay university, but never did much in the way of scholarly thinking. So when I talk about The Odyssey, for instance, which is one of the books I have to teach, I tend to just pick out the words and phrases and images that I like. The big picture has always eluded me--the arc of the journey and how people change and stuff. I just love the part where Odysseus is on the island with Calypso -- the "softly-braided goddess" -- and she reluctantly helps him build his boat so he can leave. "Listen, unhappy man," she says to him. I staged this part a few years ago and Nancy Drew played Hermes, who goes to the island and tells Calypso that the gods have convened and decided she has to let Odysseus head home. Nancy Drew was fabulous. She wore mirrored sunglasses and rode my bike on stage. This was for a class, and afterward my teacher told me that it was very good, and that the set had a "very raku" feeling to it. I forget what the set was. Gym mats, I think. And some timbers and an axe. How about those Red Sox, hah? 9:46 p.m. - 2003-09-28 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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