11.29.06

Today I was conducting oral exams with students, and I found out that a student didn’t have much patience when reading. like myself. Maybe it wasn’t a lack of patience, but she said that it took her a long time to get through books. That might not be the lack of patience at all, but longsuffering. I wish I could hear someone say long suffering sometime in a conversation. This phenomenon seems to be only a written thing. But I probably heard someone say longsuffering in Christian high school, quoting the Bible and referencing God’s path. I was also thinking about the word mighty the other day, it’s been too long since I’ve been able to appropriately use that word in discourse. I think that one also showed up in some Hymns or Worship songs.

Five days a week I wake up around 6 or 6:30 so I can get to work on time. The fact that both of my bosses lack personality and humanity has a direct relation to my neuroses and nervous approach to making sure I dot all my j’s and such at work. Making it on time, turning in my folder with attendance, not wearing sunglasses during class, don’t letting students out early, being professional, not using white out, not mixing business and pleasure. When you work there often isn’t enough time to reflect about what the hell you’re doing and what the hell is what the hell you’re doing and what the hell everything is, which can also be a good thing.

That’s alright. But who’s here when I’m not here? Who’s here when there’s still presence but not I? some one is here who’s still present, some consciousself, Right now someone’s outside the window honking the horn, it’s 9:08 p.m. There almost always seems to be some sort of nocturnal activity going on across the street from my apartment. Outside my neighbor’s apartment. Dizque my neighbor’s an alcoholic, I’ve seen him a couple of times in the street. He’s around my age, a young man. He always tries to flag me down and speak to me in English, how’s it going dude, I guess he lived in California or something for awhile. I usually see him in the early afternoon, sloshed under a low sun. my girlfriend says that his mom doesn’t let him in the house and doesn’t let him out of the house, either. He has some pusher friends who drive Hummers and bring him drugs at night. I never want to talk to him, but, you know, he’s totally free to do whatever he wants because it’s right if he likes it and he’s not hurting anybody.

I like my neighborhood, though, it’s what is called “popular” in Spanish. It’s very traditional and there aren’t a lot of white people, there are a lot of stray dogs and some cats who are very noisy when they copulate, there aren’t hardly any people from the United States or Europe, sometimes with this feeling I feel free, or clandestine. Like I’m conducting a secret operation of a private nature. A project with (personal) reality. There is always someone selling cds or barbecued meat or fruit out of a truck or belts or brooms in the street. Maybe it’s quaint. It’s still novel.

I get out of class every day around 4:00 and often stroll around my house in the living room in the afternoon. Today outside my window in the apartment below mine there were children celebrating a birthday party. Some young barely along in years, the world is still a novelty to be breathed, creating a fragile curved drop of water dropping that you won’t remember accurately. They were hitting piñatas on clotheslines surrounded by concrete on all sides; I watched on nostalgically, surrounded by contentment and reserved joy.

Everything is usually satisfactory and all right and I’m drinking black tea and smoking a Marlboro Blue cigarette right now. Do they have blue marlboro cigarettes in my country? I don’t ever remember seeing them. It’s a real Nice Mild Blend. So, anyways, I try to keep a calm nature and when a problem arises I try to be the problem and not think about it, about separation between me and something else, you know, and all that other zen shit I’ve been into lately. A lot of times I forget to do it but when I remember it usually works and brings me some piece of Mind. It’s very pragmatically based, if you’re into that kind of applicable shit. I’m also down with its metaphysics.

The connection between “being somewhere else” and “being where you are” has a funny nature that continually uncovers itself, often revealing circularity. In any case it’s good to be where I am, it always should be good to be where I am. I have a fucking sty in my eye, though, it’s the second time I’ve gotten one since I’ve been in South America. What the hell is a sty, anyway? I think it’s a small mound of white infected puss that forms close to the orb of your eyeball, actually. They’re extremely annoying, I guess they can be cured with tea bags and prevented with sunglasses. That’s true.

Right now my girlfriend is out spraypainting advertisements for a release party for a magazine/journal of which she’s involved in the production. It’s called La Pepa. She’s riding my bicycle and is wearing a yellow and white fluorescent vest, she looked really cute when she left. I hope she doesn’t get stopped by the police and thrown in jail. Though she knows how to maneuver a bike well, my girl. and I would imagine she could make her way out of a pickle.