The great unmentionable swept by again, leaving me to stagger along, catching my breath, grabbing the doorframe, staring into the faces of my kids–you okay? You OK? You–locking eyes–thumbs up?
“Nobody cares and it doesn’t matter.” I use this when my frustration about whatever logistical pretzel I’m supposed to twist myself into for the purposes of Education comes around, and my stress lowers, my fists unclench, my teeth ungrind. Nobody cares if I give this essay a 78 or an 84. It doesn’t matter if the college deadline marches past and my letter of recommendation didn’t make it into the “folder”–because everything’s digital and cloud-y nowadays but we cling to the 19th century archivist lingo. (Also because college is a capitalist endeavor with the appearance of exclusivity and expiration but the reality, like the wizard behind the curtain, is that knowledge is free and learning is fundamentally human.) I say the words in my head, and sometimes I say them aloud when a colleague or a student is riled up about the perception of something being Awful and life-altering or reputation-ending.
Almost wrote life-ending.
Because sometimes lives do end. And it’s never enough, what I say and think and do is never enough to anchor that ethereal soul to this plane. I can’t love someone enough to make them see themselves as I do. I can’t pull them out of their time stream to show them the swirling chasm of Time and its multiple divides and how any, many choices will lead to the richness of a full-lived life. I can’t teach them The Care and Feeding of the Human Entity if it’s not written in a language they can then articulate, claim, practice, live. I can’t order a pineapple pizza and think that substantial nutrition can underpin the stick-shaky structure of their psyche. I send words: I miss you. I love you. I’m so proud. The words are all I have, and they are not enough. They fail, fall down on the ground and skitter off, pushed aside by an icy blast that slices through those tenuous connections and sweeps all those students from the halls. I pause. I question–everything. I look for loopholes. I see my failures. I hate my limitations.
Who cares if one more light goes out in a sky of a million stars? Well, I do.
Tribelet of Hoodlums 