Thursday, March 12, 2020

que sera, sera







































Current mood is very much that bit from the Simpsons where Ned Flanders realized the world was about to end (an asteroid heading for the town) and he goes up on a hill and starts singing "Que Sera, Sera." I've kind of hit the point of weird quiet resignation or maybe emptiness with this: yes, maybe I will lose a lot of people I love, yes, maybe my life will be majorly disrupted for a year or more. This is about the eighteenth "New Normal" I've weathered since 2000, and I'm ready to be done with that. I want some kind of "steady normal" or, better, "actual improvement" (because "New Normal" ALWAYS means stuff is going to be worse somehow, or else it's called an improvement)

I've ordered a lot of yarn online this week but if indeed the hinted-at bans of European imports (I don't always think a "misspeak" is really a "misspeak") happen, at least I will have....even more yarn.

ETA: Uploaded all my remaining PowerPoint files for all my classes, so at least there's that. If I have to, when I am at home - if we indeed all do get sent home - I can type up some explanatory notes and post them, or see if I can record audiofiles and upload them of me talking about the material. Testing remains an issue; labs will be an issue though I think at this point I just shrug and go "I grade them based on the labs we've done" and don't even try.

I guess kind of like in Dune, where the fear has gone (passed through me), nothing remains. I am still weirdly calm about this like I can't even care any more. Maybe I finally did break? And maybe this is what it feels like? If so, it's not so bad.

1 comment:

anita said...

This is for you—

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

© John O'Donohue.