california dreams

i think a hurricane passed through, but i'm not entirely sure. i believe that i slept through it, so yeah guys. hurricane rita. what a trip. now when i say that i can sleep through a hurricane, i can say it with that extra literal umph.
anyway, i've just called continental and am sitting here, on hold. perhaps writing this and sitting on the phone is not the best use of my vacation time (no school until wednesday baby), but i'm desperate to get to cali. i was supposed to be in this wedding, this wedding of one of the world's coolest people and attended by such as well, and if there is anything that i want at this juncture in time, it's to be in THIS wedding in california WITHOUT having to use any substitute days. c'mon rita, c'mon! momma wants a trip to california!

a little more of the same

i've picked up swearing this month. to understand the magnanimity of this issue, you have to understand: i made it 21 years without swearing. not once, i promise you. and then i turned 22, and i think i swore twice in the 2 years between then and now, and then suddenly, this month, sandwiched somewhere between 2 hurricanes and a failed pseudo-relationship (with emphasis on the "pseudo," which is all we need to know really), profanity has found its fodder.
i'm a little disturbed.
today, the day before hurricane rita, i keep calling my friends, but i can't get through. and i'm not worried, but disturbed, again with this strange sense of "disturbed." there is, oddly, exactly one cell phone, owned by a child named jarad (poor jarad), that consistently picks up my cell phone, and so it is on this one soul whom i pour all my strange disturbance--about hurricanes and such. and yet, i rarely refer to the hurricane. instead, our conversation, as he and his roommate sat in their traffic on 290 and i sat in my traffic between rice village and spring, went something like

jarad: we're passing a street called kickapoo. haha.
me: why must you hate on the american indians? haven't they had enough. leave 'em alone.
jarad: (not quite sure if i'm joking, which i was, for the record) I was just saying that i have a simple mind, and that it makes me laugh.
me: it makes me laugh too.
jarad: shame on your for pointing a finger at me
me: what?!!
jarad: yeah, you just totally told me off. and then you agreed with me. you hypocrite.
me: what?!!
jarad: you heard me!
me: i was JOKING!
jarad: what is that saying, about how if it's true, people protest even more?
me: i was JOKING!
jarad: you know, my grandmother was native american.
me: um, i didn't know that.
jarad: yeah, i have native american...really, i have a little of everything, except asian.
me: well, i guess we'll have to fix that.
jarad: right, so when are we going to make babies?
me: (snort) i could just drop you off with a sign in chinatown
jarad: nah.
me: no, it would work! you know, give you a sign. "please register here...submit blood test here." it would work, I'm telling you."
jarad: you're crazy, joy.
me: i know
jarad: but you're funny.
me: i aim to please

i might have made this conversation a little catchier than it was...which is sad, if you think about it, but that is the nature of reconstructing conversations...and the point, the ever-elusive point, is that THIS is what i talked about in the middle of the greatest metropolitan evacuation in the history of the United States. yes. in fact, we went on to talk about

jarad: you know, they say that humans involuntarily eat 8 spiders in their lifetimes?
me: i had heard that. you know what? you should write a grant. you should write a grant and study the 8-Spider-Diet
jarad: um, no.
me: why NOT?
jarad: because it doesn't exist.
me: wait, you just told me that it did exist
jarad: no, i never said that.
me: no, you JUST did.
jarad: no
me: yes!
jarad: no, it's not like Atkins or something crazy like that. people don't actually have this diet.
me: i'm not saying to MAKE it a diet. i'm saying to study the phenomenon. it'd be great.
jarad: why don't you study it.
me: nono, this is all you.
jarad: well, then we should at least call it "the arachnid diet"
me: no.
jarad: why?
me: because then that's saying that you're going to study people eating flies because that's what spiders eat...
jarad: noooooooooo

and so, once again. THIS is what we talked about in the middle of the greatest evacuation of a metropolitan area in the history of the United States.

i suppose this is my way of keeping disturbances at bay. already in daily life, i almost never call except to talk nonsense (and only in its purest form), and now i have this need to laugh, and a need to focus on details. but, i'm home now. and i can't turn off the news, and every hour or so, i disappear into a back room and dial phone numbers, only to get busy signals. and this i suppose doesn't really matter. yet still

me: hi
jarad: joy? (this is about the fifth time i've called him today)
me: i'm sorry. i'm sorry i call so much. but i keep watching the news and i worry about you guys on the road. i mean...
jarad: we're here
me: you're there?
jarad: yeah, we just got in.
me: oh good. you never ran out of gas?
jarad: no, no. we're fine.
me: ok.
jarad: listen, i'm going to eat. i'll call you later?
me: no, you don't have to call. i just wanted to know you guys were there. say hi to mark (his roommate) for me.
jarad: will do.

i prefer to talk about spiders. and asian babies. or anything really, rather than what's on my mind. people don't know this about me...moving on...

they forecast that we won't be in the eye of the storm, so it is doubtful that rita will truly "devastate" (everyone's favorite word) houston. it's just that there's been so much lately.
my heart hurts.
who says that?
this probably has something to do with the cursing.

rita

i will never name my children rita or katrina, or anything ending with the letter a.

finally, dancing for non-dancers

i like to forget people can watch me, when dancing. after all, i'm not dancing for the pleasure of being seen, nor am i necessarily a pleasure to see.

an essay that says it well.

http://www.creativenonfiction.org/brevity/brev18/killian_salsa.htm

there's the growing feeling

of desperation, like i can't do enough in one given day; where did my hours go; why am i sitting at this desk writing in this little, white box when it's 6:30 in the morning and i went to sleep without writing lesson plans, why? why?
that was a rhetorical question, by the way. but, nonetheless...i think, i suspect, it has something to do with this growing feeling of desperation...not desperation, but fatigue. as in, it is not stress, really. it's more of a suffocating, slowly. it's almost nice, like falling asleep in cotton. as if you know you're going to die, but it seems so pleasant...it's hard to explain. unless you're a teacher? unless you're one of those young, tightly-wound, high-strung teacher-types in a school full of students who can't speak English and don't even know they can't speak English because they only speak with each other, and then there are the Hurricane Katrina evacuees. yes, i have evacuees, no surprise. i live in Houston. it was only a matter of time. they came last week.
but when they walked into my 4th period class...
it's the time, and the timing, and that class. they walked in and i couldn't stop. i was like, "sit anywhere." and they did, and we moved on, the whole class, and they just sort of rolled themselves in.
and how do i stop? when do i stop? to ask the questions? to address their prescence in my classroom, but that's not even the point. the point is that there are 31 students registered for 4th period, 22 desks, and about 6 absences per day and more absent students being added to that class nearly every day. the point is that i cannot believe that this is MY point, seeing as my alarm is still set to/so i wake up to NPR and NPR, at this point, may as well be known as "Konnecting Katrina" (or whatever cheesy name), because nothing else exists right now, except for Katrina and her babies, my babies, the children who walked into my room the other day. and there they sit, sometimes in a desk, while I feverishly teach off of post-it notes, because i sat for 3 hours at my desk the night before, staring so blankly at my other notes. is it because i'm too tired? or is it because i'm drowning, suffocating actually, slowly. and it's so nice, like falling asleep in cotton, but...i don't know.
i want to know something.
let me get back to you on the question.

apparently, i can only communicate vicariously

audio austronomy: how did the lesson go?
JoieTang: eh
JoieTang: it was an eh day
audio austronomy: i am sorry
JoieTang: i have a big pimple
JoieTang: a big gut
audio austronomy: for the ehness
JoieTang: and i can't do this one salsa move
JoieTang: and somehow
JoieTang: SOMEHOW
JoieTang: these must all be related
JoieTang: my eh teaching
JoieTang: my big gut
audio austronomy: hehe
audio austronomy: well
audio austronomy: if you believe in the concept of
JoieTang: and that one salsa move
audio austronomy: qi
audio austronomy: and a mass consciousness
audio austronomy: and
audio austronomy: equilibrium
audio austronomy: i'm sure it can all be related
JoieTang: then let it be so
audio austronomy: mm
audio austronomy: (gongggggg)
audio austronomy: i banged the ceremonial gong
JoieTang: oh good
JoieTang: did you waft the incense?
audio austronomy: yes
audio austronomy: and
audio austronomy: i spoke the sacred word of lorelai
audio austronomy: dirty

waste not, want not

JoieTang: it's been kind of an emotional roller coaster of a week, last weekend to this past one
JoieTang: i've temporarily lost my sense of humor. have you seen it?
JoieTang: it's in a striped box
JoieTang: with a picture of pandora on it
Queerheadguy: i think charlie ate it
JoieTang: that is so wrong
Queerheadguy: but he eats everything
Queerheadguy: he once ate my paranoia
Queerheadguy: it was a surprisingly relaxing week
Queerheadguy: until he gave it back
Queerheadguy: lemme tell you
Queerheadguy: it smelled
JoieTang: so, it was regurgitated paranoia?
Queerheadguy: didn't come out that way honey
Queerheadguy: it had corn on it

katrina byproducts: cautions and solutions

Goddess980: thanks to the recent uprise in crime, my purse with my cell phone was stolen

JoieTang: WHAT?! WHERE?!

Goddess980: hobby lobby!!!!!!!!!!!! I was buying fake flowers to make arrangements and my purse was yanked out of my cart, I couldn't have been more than a foot away looking at flowers. thankfully the thief was an idiot, he mistook my redleather clutch in my purse for a wallet, when it was really my makeup bag (although I did buy expensive makeup just a month ago) and he took my cell phone, which doesn't work unless it's plugged in, and he didn't even take the charger that was sitting on top too! they found the rest in the mens' room dumped out everywhere, but thank god my debit card, license and such were all there. I just don't have anyone's phone number anymore.

JoieTang: well, remind me...if my children have sociopathic tendencies, to drop them. that will be my service to humanity

hurricane in my head

walked into the george r. brown convention center today to volunteer for all of 2 hours (my goodness, i'm such a saint) sorting clothes into piles and walked into the wrong part of the center. saw the beds lined up in rows upon rows, wall to massive concrete wall, and the shower schedule posted on an obliging pillar. the pink group showers at 10am, the green group showers at 11am, and so on.
begin to sort clothes. begin to label. a man wearing the official yellow plastic jacket calls out, "all volunteers who can hear me, please come here! all volunteers who can hear me, please come here! we have 6 more trucks of water coming in. as you can see, we are out of space. we need to scootch all of this," hand waving expansively at the literal wall of clothing covering the floor, "over there. scootching...is...is exactly what you think it is! let's focus people!"
"you can just walk in," said the man beside me,"they'll put you to work."

i felt so high school, so "i'm doing this with my friends, " so let me get a call on my cell phone while i move piles of clothes around, so temporary. i park my car; i walk in; i get a nametag. i work for 2 hours. now, i'm going dancing. i'm going, but it seems wrong somehow.