You stop for just one second....

I was going to write this entry just as an exercise in writing to record more or less random minutia (which, arguably, most of my entries are, in any case) -- no Grand Emotions are gripping my breast, or wherever those Victorian notions are supposed to physically reside.

But I wanted a cup of tea to accompany my written ramblings. So I went into my kitchen, not without fear and trembling. Things have Gotten Out of Hand, in my kitchen, in the past several weeks. A friend told me last night, as we went out to dinner and then somewhat oddly exchanged Tips and Hints on organizing space and cleaning from women's magazines and friends' hard-won domestic wisdom, that "the secret to keeping your kitchen clean, the theory, that is, is that you must never let ANYTHING sully the kitchen sink." He explained that the sink is the metaphorical center of a kitchen, and certainly of its potential for disastrous mess and uncleanliness. So if you always do every individual dish or utensil, much less whole dinners' worth of plates and pans... well, magically, nothing ELSE will accumulate.

I believe this theory with the kind of simple faith that comes with a silver-bullet solution combined with plain common sense. I think I ought to try it. God knows letting dishes pile up in the sink demonstrably has the OPPOSITE effect.

Anyway, I went into my kitchen to make a cup of tea, and then quailed before the towering stacks of vilely filthy dishes and pans and pots and bowls, and OLD cups of tea with, literally, mold growing happily on top of the now rancid dregs of cold liquid. Truly revolting. I don't even know if this is wise, to reveal the phenomenally messy nature of my household, at moments. But I guess I am revealing it. It IS, I hasten to assure you (you, my imagined readers) a temporary phenomenon.

And that's what happened, in fact; the phenomenon of that filth became temporary, because I literally couldn't see how I was going to be able to make any tea without doing all the dishes, gathering up trash and groceries that need to be put away, and rationalizing the mess in there.

So I DO have an emotion flooding me, at the moment. Great relief and pleasure that I finally accomplished that nasty task. I wouldn't claim that my kitchen was CLEAN, mind you, because that would take scrubbing the floor on my hands and knees à la Cinderella, frankly. And that ain't gonna happen. Not right now, anyway.

But I can add it to other incremental accomplishments like digging my way out from under vast piles (the bottom layers of which were literally months old) of laundry; cleaning out my hall closet so it can actually be used for storage AND be walked into. Slowly, slowly I am taming this apartment again.

Strangely (or maybe not so strangely) I am better at living in order and calm cleanness when I share space with someone else; I guess as long as that person, too, is someone who prefers order and neatness. Probably if I lived with a slob, I would descend to that easily reached level.

But when I live alone (which I do), it is harder to motivate to do my own social reproduction of my own labor power. It's harder to take the time to do laundry, to clean, to straighten, to do dishes, and especially, to COOK. I infinitely prefer to cook for other people. Cooking for one is ungodly boring.

Oy. Enough of cleaning.

What else is going on, these days? There are now fifteen working days left of the school year. This thought gives me much pleasure. Whatever happens next year, at least it will be NEXT YEAR. A new year always has the potential to be a better year, in teaching. Even in a district as absolutely fucked up as Oakland. I will continue my efforts to get a job somewhere besides Lowell (which will likely be closing, in any case, within a few years -- unless, after two more years, or one more year, it begins to transform into a small high school, one of many options loosed on us unaware by the state administrator, aka, All Forward to the Grand Gentrification of West Oakland, Randolph Ward. The perfect unison of a capitalist restructuring of property in West Oakland (One BART Stop Away from San Francisco's Financial District!!) and the capitalist restructuring (er, elimination) of public education via the "No Child Left Untested" Act; I mean, No Child Left Behind Act.

This is the time of year that teachers wax sentimental, realizing that some of the kids who drove them MOST nuts are the ones they'll miss terribly next year. Especially eighth grade teachers, like me. Every day seems both a little easier -- kids are happier and even though they're a bit hyper with approaching freedom, they're also somewhat calmer since it's finally almost HERE, their cherished summer -- and a little frenetic, as we try to finish up last projects and cram some final pieces of information in their curious heads. I found myself giving a mini lecture on the Cold War and nuclear weapons today, for instance, because none of them knew anything, anything, anything about it.

It's funny. I often find myself sounding like a Stalinist of the first water when I tell kids about the Soviet Union; I'm bending the stick so far in the other direction from what I remember hearing, growing up in the final paroxysms of the Cold War. And they've never HEARD of any social system that doesn't revolve around capital and property and profit. I can't bear to give a nuanced, even-handed treatment of it, at least in the thumbnail that is almost always all I have time for. So I describe the Soviet Union as being against inequality between rich and poor; as having no unemployment; health care for all; housing for all; no homeless, no starving people; support for people fighting against others taking their countries away or trying to control them and rob them (though that would more properly be Cuba than the USSR, after the 30s, anyway)... etc. I allude to the lack of democracy and multiple possibilities of political (or religious) vision only briefly.

I have one student who is very political (though he's never really told me that until recently; but he's clearly taken in the fact that I am... I sometimes wonder how they figure that out: I'm not USUALLY lecturing or teaching about subversion or radical history... I guess I don't hide my anti-war positions, or my positions on gender politics or race, though...) and he was very excited about the discussion of the nuclear arms race and which nation it is that has ever used the atom bomb, and against civilians, at that. But then... then he asked, in the middle of that discussion, whether it was true that the only reason we were at war with Iraq was because of the Jews. Fuck. My face reflected blank astonishment, and then I had just about time before the bell to reject that, but not to explain why that was so utterly wrong an analysis.

Other stuff. The music I am listening to right now is a CD I got at last Friday evening's Freight & Salvage (a coffee house/ folk venue in Berkeley) show, with Mike Seeger (Pete Seeger's stepbrother) and Evo Bluestein. Bluestein plays tons of old timey folk instruments, particularly the autoharp, which I adore. It turned out, in fact, that that was autoharp week at the F&S or something, because Bryan Bowers had played the night before. I wish I'd known; I would have gone to considerable efforts to see Bowers. He's got some amazing songs. One is a lament about a relationship that is ending... it's kind of chauvinist, but the melody is so gorgeous that I forgive it. Another is his chronicle of his own time in prison (for weed possession or dealing or whatever), and it's incredibly poignant.

And still on the culture front... I am rereading Possession by A. S. Byatt. Probably for the sixth or seventh time, if that isn't underestimating. I do reread books I love a lot. I've read everything Byatt has written (something I also do with authors I like), but this is the least challenging in emotional tone; the least negative or bleak. I like everything she does, largely because of her use of language and emotional observations. But this one novel is particularly addictive because of the dual romance in it (her characters are, like good characters, multifaceted enough that you aren't completely sympathetic to them; they have flaws that are believable... these -- Roland and Maud; Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte -- much less so than other of her characters) and also because it's arguably part of a sub-genre of British novels that center around universities; the academic novel or something like that. Other authors include David Lodge, Kingsley Amis, and Evelyn Waugh. I have a weakness for these books either despite or because of their strange class politics. It IS a weakness; I can't stand the authors, most of them. Misogynists all.

One last bit of unrelated flotsom and jetsam (sp?): Friday is my birthday, and I am going to get to dress up and go out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. I'm looking forward to it. I think I will also have a brunch-y kind of thing on Sunday with a lot of friends, at my sister's house. This is much more of a fuss than I've made about my birthday for the last several years, really. Probably a large part of that is due to A., who is very good at celebratory rituals and recognition of Occasions.

Bye, y'all