August 3rd, 2011.

I’m not sleeping.  I guess that’s not news.  I’m often writing when I’m not sleeping.  The last couple of days I’ve gone to bed like a responsible adult at a responsible hour.  And then tossed and turned and gotten back up.  Unfortunately I’ve done nothing responsible with the time.  I read.  I watch Futurama.  I stare at my ceiling.  At the wall.  At the inside of my eyelids.  I watch Star Trek and I read some more.  I’ve got three books going.  Two I’ve read before and I have one new one that doesn’t capture me.  I’ve got two OTHER books staring at me accusingly.  One is useful, the other depressing and I generally flee to the familiar, trying for slumber once again by four.

I don’t know why, but I’ve always Loved reading in the bathroom.  Or in the kitchen leaning against the dishwasher as it cycles late at night.  I don’t read in the dark anymore, but dim light’s okay.  Until we took it down, I’d read pn the couch by Christmas tree light.

Monday night I ran my open mic.  It was slow and strangely underpopulated but ended beautifully.  Tuesday night we played Brewers Alley in Frederick – and it was kind of slow and underpopulated – but it ended powerfully and by the last set I was sweating freely and jamming with Kristen happily.  There was a scary moment or three when ALL of us kind of got lost and I went to the chorus of a song and Heather went to the verse and Kristen firmly entered the bridge – but it was a great show.  “Old Love” had some jazz happen in the middle and I got into some strange loop in the middle of “Drift” where I kept heading for the C from the A where the B clearly SHOULD’VE been.  I couldn’t tell you why a Phrygian motif entered the solo in “LooseN”, but we all got over it.  We had a nice audience of nice people once we started turning heads – and they got over it too.

Tonight Kristen and I had dinner with my mother at the newly opened location of Busboys and Poets in Hyattsville, MD.  My mother used to teach kindergarten and has been involved with children’s programs throughout her entire career.  She retired shortly after my father’s death and she was never quite the same… but this summer she got involved again – and it’s like she’s 15 years younger!  It was great to see her so animated and – well – a lot of the energy seemed to come from frustration, but the frustration is leading to action and that’s a very, very positive thing.

I need to fight a fight that I feel I can win.

The world today is filled with so much that makes me feel hopeless, my mother’s getting that wonderful experience of knowing you can’t save EVERYONE, but that you’ve made a huge difference in a couple of Lives.  I remember that aspect of teaching…. Sometimes I think I could go back and do that again…

Of course, then I listen to Heather’s tales of subbing and think that if I ever entered the classroom again that I probably wouldn’t last any longer than I did the first time.  Shame really.  I don’t even wish I could taser children – just their parents.

Rain has come storming through Maryland for the past two nights and we’re driving home through mist and rain and thick, humid air.  Road spray slaps against the windshield, shunted away by the wipers and in an instant is replaced.  Tail-lights and streetlights reflect off of wet pavement and I’m reminded that if I was awake at 4am on a rainy night back in college I’d have gone for a drive through the mostly-deserted morning streets just for the beauty of the light.  Wandering Baltimore at that moment between the paths of the night owl and the early bird treats you to a concrete and rust wilderness that flirts with silence and creepy emptiness.  Add the rain and it’s absolutely breath-taking.

Which is fortunate as Charm City in the moist tends to smell like wet dog and I must admit that even in NICE weather I generally drove with the windows rolled tightly up.