Everyday Absurdity

A woman is walking through her living room. She picks up a discarded T-shirt, rumples her kid's hair and steps into the kitchen to sit next to her husband who is reading the paper and drinking coffee in the morning sunshine. All the while, she is talking to us, through the TV screen, about her health insurance. We have just followed her through her house, even though we were never really there.

A commercial, of course.

Is this not one of the most ridiculous premises in the history of mankind? -- this common format for television commercials? This woman makes no reaction, whatsoever, to...what? The fact that there is a TV crew in her house, in the middle of the morning routine? Or, is there some sci-fi concept at work -- a portal for talking to the world's population; a population she just happens to know is interested in hearing about her health insurance issues and triumphs?

Completely comfortable, the husband grins wryly at his wife and goes back to his newspaper. He is unperturbed. Nothing strange about universal communication portals and/or film crews in his kitchen and/or following his wife around.

Rain, rain, don't go away...

The other day, while I was at work, a summer storm rolled in -- the kind of rain that creates an instant lake wherever there is open space; the kind of rain that pounds like millions of tinfoil feet on roads and roofs. The sky went nearly black.

The kids are done school for the year. I spend my days in the old building where I have an office made of real plaster walls. There is a peace in school with the kids gone. Sure, things are better with them around, because I get to teach, but the pressure level seriously decreases when the halls are silent.

Monet -- "Morning in the Rain on the Seine."

I spend my days with no tie on. (I despise wearing a tie. "Despise" is not a strong enough word, unless accompanied by an expletive, the likes of which I try to avoid on this blog.) And, tieless, I work on scheduling issues some of the time. The rest of the time, I prepare and study for the classes of the coming year. This year, it is advanced English and "College Composition."

I have a separate table I use for my teaching work (I feel like the purity and the creativity of my teaching will be somehow "infected" if I set the associated materials on my administrative desk) and I was sitting there absorbed in a poem by Stephen Dunn when the deluge started. I went to the window to watch, Dunn still playing in my head like underscore.