Am I okay?

5/27/09
Okay, okay clock’s ticking. Now comes the first hurdle. The money. Oh the money. Actually the money isn’t the first hurdle. Thinking about the money is the first hurdle. Thinking about what I’m going to get for the money. After all, this seems like a lot of money. Two semesters will equal a third of the cost of all of my four years at SFSU. Jesus, I could buy a car, well, a used car. But a real good used car for this kind of money. And then if I spend this money, and if I get my teaching credential, am I going to find peace and contentment? Fulfillment maybe?
I don’t know, but I want to know. I want to know is that I’m making the correct decision, I want to know… what? Hell, I want to know the future. The future. My future. All of a sudden, really this is sudden although I’ve thought of a version of this for about twenty years, I’ve made this pretty big decision. If you know me, you’ll know one thing for sure, I hate what I’m doing for work now and if you’ve known me for a long time you’ll know that I’ve disliked my trade for many years. This decision to become a high school teacher and bail on the trade that I feel has abandoned me so many years ago isn’t really so grand. So why does borrowing money to follow an idea that just might work seem so daunting?
So far, I’ve run this insanity past a few friends of mine, the only reply I’ve had so far is unequivocal. I respect my neighbor Scott, he’s smart, and a decision maker and when I run what I think is this huge dilemma past him as he’s pulling out of our apartment buildings garage he doesn’t hesitate, “Do it.”
“What?” I believe I’m looking at him in the pose of the RCA dog.
He does an exaggerated head nod, and speaks more slowly this time. “Do it.”
“Really?”
He laughs, “Jesus, are you serious?”
I nod dumbly, “Ugh huh.”
“You’d be happy, you’d be a great teacher.”
Of course I think he’s doing the guy thing and jiving me – but maybe not.

Darkness Visible

What the hell was Milton saying? We who are never without light, electricity, car horns, alarms, cell phones, thump-thumping war wagon rap, the straining diesel bus, the siren, the light, light, light with little illumination and less heat. What do we know about Darkness Visible? Viscous blackness, the void, the place we dare not go, the Fall. Not just into the abyss but to Hell's fired furnace without light. Oh, isn't that something? This is from a man who lived without television, without radio, or ipod. No earbuds for John Milton. No. Just a working belief in his fearsome brutal god and the ability to imagine it. And the Devil. All other imaginations of Satan pale or sample Milton. Take for instance the corporation.
I love, fear, and hate his Satan, the first grand thief, perched in the Tree of Life like a cormorant. I imagine Milton with a quill and candlelight and unimaginable dreams imagined when I open the envelope from Wells Fargo, the corporation, the thief whose smooth soft hand easily guides to the garden. I know not the Tree of Knowledge, bought dear from knowing ill, I'm a hick from another time and place and lack the capacity for such evil. I'm a sucker for the corporate Satan who has maddening phone sentinels, and layer upon layer of fallen Angele's to obfuscate and confuse a simple man easily confused.
Milton believed in his god and imagined a seething fallen angel to push against that god and goodness. We're of a different time and believe in little. How do you push against apathy? Create a new god in plastic and steel that gives a little and takes more and does its business in the dark.