Reflections on starting and finishing

New and Old, Alive and Dead, Innocent and Remorseful, ordered pairs that offset each other in innocence and wisdom. In the first chapter of our book "Great Expectations" These images are juxtaposed upon each other, as happens in real life. The old convict even refers to the young man who will come and slice poor Pip's throat, is this a reference to the young man who lives in all of us, untamed and primal. I sit here in this class as an outsider of sorts listing to an old man begin the process of waking the young to wisdom.

We are asked to hot-link our blogs to relevant online content, but there is no hot-link to relevant past experiences, no link to the months I spent backpacking through Australia, No http:// site for burying friends and relatives. There is no way to google the summer I spent playing with water balloons or the birth of my sons. I can't provide a .jpg of the years I spent learning a trade or text message the agony of losing my vocation in an accident, I cant IM the loss of masculinity that goes along with the failure of my body and learning to deal with daily pain. I don't know how to blog the helplessness I feel when I fight with my wife or E-mote the metronome of life's years passing by with no undo button. I don't know the text speak for teaching my boys to look under rocks for worms and bugs and plant flowers to give to their mom. How can I get my time as a chef in Phoenix and on the Isle of Wight into your i-pod. Wikipedia doesn't have the definition for finding a first American edition of "Les Miserables" at an Estate sale for $0.50 and explain how it is the best book ever written. I don't see an attachment for my life. I see crap that will quickly take the place of fact, and homogeneity that will replace the unique individual's experience just as "Friends" and "The Office" have replaced the novel.

So we are starting English 123, and I sit here looking at these books, some I have read, others I have not. I look around the class and I see young faces that don't have the same experiences I do. I see stories in those faces, and on the whitened visage at the front of the room, and in these books. But I don't think that these blogs link these stories. Do any words? 

Last week on Tuesday we buried the body of my nephew. He would have turned five next week, his coffin was four feet long and enameled white. It had polished brass handles and a plush white satin interior. His body looked small in that tiny box. So there lies a hunk of meat, in the warming July dirt, which once housed a soul.  Here we sit dying to yesterday, children who have far too much time to build too few experiences. As if our collective soul were a can of orange juice concentrate diluted with too much water.

Are we supposed to be blogging or journaling? I think I'll Journal.

I Don't think I can bear the burden of youthful ignorance and inexperience, or new beginnings without regrets. I see these faces and worry over all the things that will happen to these kids before they understand what I'm blathering about. I think of myself at 19 and how I threw away a scholarship in order to wander around, learn to cook, and smoke pot. I wonder if I would change that if I had the power to do so. These faces don't have lines on them, nor did my nephew's. Is it better to die without the lines or go through the pain of earning them. They are earned, not the result of too much sun or smoking, or a bad diet. They are the real mark of learning and of wisdom. Wisdom equals pain and the ability stand after a mistake and remember what it feels like to not to know. It has nothing to do with grades. 

I don't think I'll be able to get back on the subject of books from here. But I guess I can work on it later.