A Simple Reminder

He is able who thinks he is able.

--Buddha

Easter Meditation

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

--Buddha

104.3

I have some time to myself while R.L. sleeps.  He got sick yesterday at daycare, and they sent him home early.  His temp was 103.  When I picked him up, his whole body was burning up.  It's our first experience with a really high fever.  

Doc encouraged us to look at the fever as a good thing.  It means that his immune system is actively fighting a virus, and the fever tells the white blood cells to work harder and makes their work more efficient.  Before we left, he advised us to resist treating the fever with any medication.  Instead, he said to monitor him closely and watch for drastic changes in behavior or symptoms. 

Last night when his temp hit 104.3, I couldn't stop myself.  Gave him a dose of baby Tylenol, and it brought it down to 102.  He's been resting pretty peacefully, and hasn't complained too much.  I can tell he feels terrible, but he's been so sweet.  

So I disobeyed the doctor's orders.  Not sure what to think about that.  All I know is it never gets stale, and I love that boy more than I ever knew I was capable of Loving. 

Horse Whisperer

S.T.C.

Every school year, I look to the spring and the Romantic poets for academic, professional, and spiritual rejuvenation.  I bounce around the room and sing lessons about rainbows and the revolutionary spirit, moon phases and intuition, Nature and non-conformity--wild flowers that grow in the cracks of the sidewalk.  I urge my students (and remind myself) to listen to the morning, to ignore the commercials, to talk to themselves while they walk somewhere they would normally drive.  We examine the works and the lives of the big 5:  Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge is my favorite.

But this year, I've started to turn on my old friend.  I don't so much get it anymore.  Maybe cause I'm a father?  Maybe cause I'm getting older?  Coleridge (crazy crazy) is just not as much fun as he used to be.

from "Dejection: An Ode"

There was a time when, though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:
For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.
But now afflictions bow me down to earth:
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth;
But oh! each visitation
Suspends what Nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of Imagination.
For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can;
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man - 
This was my sole resource, my only plan:
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.

I love the man, and I hate him too.  He probably wouldn't have had it any other way.  

from "Here is a Lesson in Creative Writing"

by Kurt Vonnegut

"FIRST RULE:  Do not use semicolons.  They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing.  All they do is show you've been to college."

The world is too much with us

by William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.--Great God!  I'd rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on the this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.