Science teacher: Biology essential question: Were humans inevitable?

Science teacher: Biology essential question: Were humans inevitable?

Star Map

I forget that sometimes I am on a spinning

planet that is just little dot situated

wobbly on the axis of z

(I had been so fixed on x marks the spot and y cut me)

That we decided and created math problems about but then the astronauts wouldn’t have been able to get home if we didn’t know but anyway

I forget that sometimes I am on a spinning

globe that is just a little speck solemnly

Taking itself much too seriously and there’s only one right answer

But I am on a little spinning planet wobbly and unsure I know because

The Gargantuan Star Map was reporting back to base that the planets

Jupiter and Neptune were underneath my floorboards

And my knees turned to gelatin because I am only flesh and blood and stardust, too and I felt shaky like I was going to fall and spin out of this world and into the next joining my brethren stars that created me and my little precarious balance

Oh that little screen was so beautiful sprinkled with constellations and they have names! Beautiful names! Names of gods, names of goddesses, and hunters and milk and crabs and horses and we see what’s above

Why do we only look up?

Oh, but the little window showed me what was below

Deep below

It was as cold as heaven

And as easy to find as hell

It was my tiny tiny tiny porthole sealed up tight

My view

Of the stars

I’m going to fall

I had to hold your hand for a minute, and I felt better

Frida's Toes

Overheard outside

the bathroom window down on the

sidewalk like a boom as if he was there in the room

the incorporeal voice said

I HAD A DREAM LAST NIGHT THAT I GAVE AWAY MY WATCH, MY BRAND NEW WATCH I SAID HERE, YOU CAN HAVE IT NOW WHY WOULD I DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT? ISN’T THAT CRAZY?

Well, I thought

There’s no mystery there

You gave away time and you feel your time isn’t valuable and you feel that money can’t buy time even though it was probably a really expensive watch you must have thought that if you gave it away maybe it wouldn’t have a hold on you anymore

But I didn’t raise out of the bubble bath to tell you that

I just thought it was kind of funny

While I looked at my red white polka-dotted painted toes ala Frida Kahlo

She made paintings of her toes on bathtub drains and a lot of other slippery

Things slithering in the waters

Like a little planet’s pool of tears the water may have well have been cement

Holding her

Down if there was a cut-away view of the bathroom I would have been in the tub hovering with the water above the ground and the man with the watch would have known the time on the cement

below

From January's Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of the writer Frank Conroy, (books by this author) born in New York City (1936). He wrote the memoir Stop-Time (1967) and the novel Body and Soul (1993). He directed the Iowa Writers' Workshop for 18 years. He once scolded a student for using irrelevant details in her short story. He said: "The author makes a tacit deal with the reader. You hand them a backpack. You ask them to place certain things in it — to remember, to keep in mind — as they make their way up the hill. If you hand them a yellow Volkswagen and they have to haul this to the top of the mountain — to the end of the story — and they find that this Volkswagen has nothing whatsoever to do with your story, you're going to have a very irritated reader on your hands."

Paddling

Bats flying around the twilight Texas sky
Eating mosquitoes
Maneuvers of force and elegance
My own Huck Finns on a raft, paddling to nowhere, or at least where I
can still see them and
Maneuver them home.

And here's to you, Mr. Robbins...

It's the birthday of novelist Tom Robbins, (books by this author) born in Blowing Rock, North Carolina
(1936). He's known for novels such as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976), Half
Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994), and Villa Incognito (2003). He says that when he
starts a book, he has no idea of what the story will be. He never outlines and
never revises. He just works on each sentence until he thinks it's perfect,
sometimes for more than an hour, and then he moves on to the next one. He said,
"I'm probably more interested in sentences than anything else in life."

From The Writer's Almanac, July 22, 2009

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2009/07/22?refid=0

Word Varmints

-1-
“In the Chute”

Writing territories…back in the wild, wooly west, the writer jumps onto the worn, warm fence, corralling thoughts and anecdotes like wild stallions, all waiting and ready to buck the insanely courageous writer. She climbs into the box, the chute, mounts the snarling beast of creativity, using electricity, magic and supernatural aid to steady the animal and her own nerves. Surrounded, boxed in by steel bars and planks, the buzzer sounds – and she’s hanging on! Drooping, dropping, and drooling: the horse and rider fight against each other as they work together in a twisted tango of torture, in a flash and an eternity. In the back of her mind she knows she’ll never be one of the giants: Austen, Tyler, Robbins, Gaiman, Steinbeck or Atwell. Those are writers, the greats who always get back on their horses. She can’t master the art of writing about magic and angels like Hoffman, or darkly yet humorously taunt gods and goddesses like Gaiman. Run out the clock, wait till the titan tires and tuckers out? She’s more than just a rodeo clown, though, and once the time’s up, she realizes she didn’t think about this part: How the hell do I get off of this thing?!


-2-
“Out on the Range: Lonesome Cowgirl”
Where do I write? In my head and it flies out and through my fingertips and flutters away, to be captured in a net, my little mental butterflies. They try to escape, and some manage to cocoon in the muses’ membranes. Got a bee in your bonnet? No, that’s just my soul. It’ll lay eggs in your hair and you’ll go crazy. With what? With what do I write? Iron maidens and swords slicing through air, spilling oxygen and slicing metaphors. Pens, computers, greasy fingertips rubbing the space bar away with my right thumb, proper English riding and writing techniques and of course, blood. The smell of boy funk dyes and permeates the salty ink blue and sometimes I write with beads, crystals, chicken feet, yarn, cellulite wax and old bra straps. What light through wonder window breaks, the halogen steam hisses by genie oil lamp light, smoky torches, gas filled wall sconces or Cleopatra’s bedside manner. The elfish light shines for me, the light of my eyes, the light of the misty moon, which makes me moody and mumble. Oh, here’s a lovely spot! But so damn inconvenient, there is too little oxygen in the rarified air. Up the road, up the hill, up the stairs; how is everything vertical? My knees creak. It’s a geological oddity. The path is rock, rough, and redundant. My flabby arms do no work as flying squirrel wings to propel me air-bound, I write grounded and dusty with clutter and junk drawer prose. Keep up! Keep up! Huff and puff and blow my house down. A witch’s broomstick bristle that’s been dried, full of mileage and altitude, angel’s feather quills, recycled dinosaur skin, bones of my ancestors, animal grease, soot, and a hand on a cave wall. I will make a mark. Snatch a whisker off of rattlesnake and see what happens.

Burning my candle, secretly starched eyelet curtains blowing my thoughts out the window, away, little white rooms in Amsterdam, and little towns in New Amsterdam, with pumpkins and geldings, breast bulging out of bodices, I ride my broomstick anywhere and dip it in the click of a ballpoint pen. I ride anywhere I please, so what if a butterfly flies faster and farther than I?

It is ready yet? My spot—do I circle it three times before I can start, do I have quirks of which I am unaware? This is too much pressure – how the hell do I know? I am not supposed to solve these mysteries: how do dragons die? Changelings change? Butterflies boast? I am only the reporter on the scene, but I will attempt to haul you up, dear reader, and take you along for the ride.

I am a portable poet, an airy artist, moving, sitting, climbing, sleeping, dreaming, dreaming…dreaming. Scribes little worm holes on my wooden brain. They tunnel and burrow and hide with the light. The alarm alarms them, and they hide in the cellar.
-3-
“Hitching Up”
How do I get started? Don’t get me started. Why isn’t my great American novel finished? Because no one has asked me to write it. I don’t know. The annoyances in life get me started. The heartbreak gets me started. Coffee gets me started. Mental Post-It™ notes and gum wrappers capture brilliance on a daily basis. Humility is served on the side for free, no charge.

Getting started is never an issue. Stopping, pausing, perusing, contemplating, and breathing…those are an issue.
-4-
“Cowgirl Up”
Outside, on the dried concrete of brown dirt, a Texas summer day, I can see the monumental peaks of a white apartment building breaking the wake, like a tall ship on an ocean of young mother’s hope. Toward the back, in the brush, running barefoot through the grass, weeds, and burrs. The burrs attach themselves to my baby flesh of feet, grabbing in with harpoon hooks, tentacles, tugging nerves and heat. The burrs find more burrs, herding the seeds of pain toward a frothing stampede. Their survival and propagation depends on the next step, the planting, moving and generating more of their species. I am forced to walk on the sides of my feet, like some bow-legged dancer, down the sidewalk, hot, hot, up the stairs, and into the foyer. Mommy, let me in, and the tears are hot…she draws a bath for me, gently pulls out all of the burrs, like little Chinese throwing stars, like shards, like crochet hooks…they go in the trash. They don’t make it to another patch of dirt. They die. The warm bath is cooler than my tears, but I am better now.
-5-
“Stand back, ma’am. I’m a writer.”
I am a writer. I am a writer. I am a writer.

I have written love letters, emails, Dear John letters, doodles, proposals for profit, analyzed art, Mother’s day cards, stories, job descriptions, resumes, poems, journals, diaries, notes, lesson plans, comments, status reports, reflections, advertising, marketing, eulogies, directions, instructions, demands, texting and twittering, blogs, logs, receipts, tip included.

What I have not done: I have never written a ransom note. I have never written a parole officer. I have never written you off. And I never will.

I wish I had written on the caves of Lascaux. I wish I have written a speech that moves people to do great and positive things, amazing acts of kindness and world safety.

Yes, I am a writer, and I’ve got something to say.