my perfect rainy day

Not surprisingly, yesterday ended with a migraine, but I did manage to get my seniors’ grades in on time.  I also had a great workshop with more students at the Crispus Attucks School in Bed-Stuy.  My workshop was scheduled for Macon Library, but the invited class had to cancel so children’s librarian extraordinaire, Mark Waldron, set up another class at a nearby school.  I have to say, I’m liking my macbook more these days, but I still don’t entirely know how to use it; since I was supposed to be giving a power point presentation, I showed up with my laptop but didn’t have the compatible cords…fortunately, the librarian, Ms. McLeod, suggested I burn my presentation onto a CD and then we used her laptop instead.  I try to be prepared for any and every eventuality when I give a presentation, but yesterday I was woefully underprepared…still, I think the workshop went well and the students were really responsive and full of great ideas.  I got home at 3pm, turned in grades by 4pm, and then crashed but still woke with a migraine an hour later.  I knew today needed to be much slower and quieter.  I don’t think I’ve actually spoken today–have I?  Well, I did go to the post office, and I guess I spoke to the clerk who helped me.  It’s been raining all day, so I went to the garden first–the class trips ducked inside the greenhouse to avoid the rain, so I had the garden almost to myself.  The lilacs are nearly spent, but some early roses have opened.  Rain makes everything more fragrant…I couldn’t help smiling to myself as I walked along, admiring the stretch of bluebells beneath the beech trees whose bark looks like an elephant’s hide (or what I imagine it to be!).  Everything we humans have made has been an attempt to mirror or best Nature.  All our colors–our paints, our clothing–we’re always trying to approximate what exists naturally in the world around us.  I looked at the bark of one tree and saw the stone tracery from a cathedral…did I love everything medieval as a teen b/c of my love of trees?  All those stories–The Mists of Avalon, Tolkien, CS Lewis–relied upon a certain appreciation of the natural world.  I haven’t seen any bunnies in the garden, but I was thinking about my inclination to burrow–and love/write stories about people/creatures who make cozy holes and disappear from the world (The Hobbit, Peter Rabbit).  I tend to be oriented more towards the past, but after seeing some great trailers at the cinema today, I’m thinking about doing something afrofuturistic…I don’t know if I’ll be able to stand the new Terminator film, but it looks really good; I saw a preview for 9, a Tim Burton film–for kids, but also with post-apocalyptic overtones…there’s also Sector 9, which seems to be about an alien invasion gone awry in South Africa–a meditation on xenophobia…

Wolverine was pretty good, though not as good as X-Men: The Last Stand.  As I prepare to watch We Shall Remain on PBS, I wish they hadn’t used a pseudo-Indian woman as the suede-clad, blue-eyed seductress in Wolverine; that’s how he gets his name, even–she tells him a trickster tale, and he takes on the name of the duped lover of the moon.  There were a few too many fight scenes–time that could have been used to better develop the relationship between the two brothers, Victor and Jimmy.  I’ve always liked Liev Schreiber (Victor), and it was intense seeing him as the villain and not the usual “good guy.”  Now that I looked at the website, I see that Victor becomes Sabretooth.  Huh?  That blond hairy guy from the first X-Men film?  But I didn’t understand why he wanted to kill his brother, and there wasn’t enough information about their parents–young Wolverine kills his father’s murderer, not knowing that his father was not really his father (the murderer is).  His mother says nothing other than, “What are you?” so I take it she didn’t know he was a mutant, and the boys flee into the woods…I have to say, I like stories about redeemed patriarchal masculinity: trained soldiers who reject the command to kill–like the Jason Bourne films (which I LOVE!).   There’s nothing more indulgent than a matinee–I brought my final exams and graded some on the train, and before the movie began.  Once the movie was over, my head was too full to grade…I need to write.  Watching a movie is like burrowing into that cozy hole in the ground–total escapism.  Star Trek‘s next…