The Bostonian Abroad

- I look on my return as a tiresome ordeal, something to be endured, rather than enjoyed. I have had such a marvelous time, and I don't want to leave this, for fear it will be "discontinued". This has felt more like home than ever did my unfortunate place atop the sad slopes of the Ko'olaus. And so it is: back to the land of the kama 'aina, the short jean shorts, the bowed legs, the bad food, the stupid drivers, the anti-haole attitude, the lack of logic and hard work, the lack of understanding of anything but that selfish little enclave of unreality deep in the middle of the huge, uncaring ocean - and so I return, as sad to leave here as I was when I left there, but for entirely different reasons. Sigh. I shall remember this place, and vow to renew my solemn relationship with the reality I have rediscovered. May it warm me as I suffer the cruelly ironic chill of that increasingly despised guilded prison of sun and palm.

- To sit in open air - Not hot, Nor cold, But cool; To gaze upon trolley cars Lumbering along the cobblestones; To be engaged in stratospheric conversation Surrounded though, by the supposedly mundane - This place, this atmosphere, These people and their honest decency, All of it Feels like HOME. -Vinaka, Jone

--- So I have been doing the usual: Teaching Taking three classes Commuting Doing House Things Entertaining Guests Despairing Waiting Now, I'm in week ten of a ten week program of teaching. I'll have the next three weeks free, but two of those weeks, I'll still be obligated to come into town to take classes in the afternoon. The one week where I'll be totally free, L. bought me a RT ticket to Portland. It isn't Boston, but it'll do. Actually, I'd rather go to Paris, but there is little chance of that. I have very much needed to get the hell out of here. L. saw this need and I love her so much for it. It will be great to be someplace different for a change. And, "Anything different is good." This summer, I am hoping to be able to go to Fiji to collect data and catch up with family and friends. We'll see what happens. The semester goes on. . .

-- The recent slap in the face is still smarting. Judgement of the kind forced upon me is very painful. I am entirely against hurting people, and this way of doing so is the most deplorable, since education is supposed to help, not hurt. Everything I learned as a teacher tells me that what happened to me, what routinely happens to students in my position is wrong. Teaching a subject without teaching about how to teach is irresponsible. The result is the kind of hurtful system to which I have been subjected. What's more is the insulting way in which those in positions of power treat those deemed less than the powerful. The arrogance I have seen is still stunning to me. It is hurtful and it is unjustifiable. It serves as a reminder of how not to be, both as a teacher and as a person. I shall struggle on, but now, with anger and contempt in my heart. I no longer enjoy this path, but I must persevere. Out of spite, I suppose, I shall continue. Having struggled so ha...

-- On the way home today, I lost my temper at a driver who was, in my view, driving like a jerk. I did the old, Masshole routine of tailgating, high-beams on. When she went to turn left, she slowed down to a complete stop and diagonally blocked the road. I laid on the horn, and a good deal of not-too-good words were exchanged, fingers punctuating the dialogue. I felt really bad about it immediately after it ended. I had lost my temper yet again drove dangerously, endangered my wife's safety, beat on my nice, new car, and screamed like a nut-case. Shameful. Why do I get so angry? Why do I feel so out of control sometimes? I swear that sometimes the stress I feel is so intolerable, it threatens to snap my fragile mental state. Work, school, commuting, isolation, culture shock, money worries - these all gang up on me in my head, and I feel like I'm going to lose it completely. So, on my way back to campus this afterneoon, bearing my former angry state in mind, I took 3...

--- The wind blows fierce up there, but it's gorgeous. People jumped or got shoved over the edge of the cliff, but you'd never know it to look at the place. Tourists flock there in droves, while thugs wait to steal their stuff from their unattended rentals.

---- It was about a month ago when the realization hit that passion was gone from life. The droning of the workaday, the getting up and going for reasons unknown, save the digits on a piece of paper adding to the financial security to continue in this limbo. I had lost my passion. This life had seduced it out of me, invited me to let it go. Linguistics removes it to quantitatively and qualitatively categorize and analyze various aspects of human language in an empirical way. Teaching had likewise been reduced to the systems of the language, the ways to communicate most effectively and clearly: English Grammar, Listening Strategies, Oral Production and Pronunciation Techniques, Cultural Analysis, etc. All emotion was gone. Something to be considered as hindering the analysis, limiting the effectiveness of communication, the true stuff of WHY we speak was excluded. Life had taken on the soma-pleasant sameness that comes over a person who lives in a place where the seasonal chan...