Friday I stayed at school until about 4:30. Eva, a student, came in with a couple of friends after school. Her friend spent most of the time talking my ear off about the differences between Berkeley High and Head-Royce while Eva laughed and looked embarassed. It was raining softly but steadily while I worked.

Left school and it had just stopped raining, so the air was sharp and cool and the sky was gray. I wasn't hungry yet, so I walked over to Telegraph to try to work up an apetite. Small groups of undergrads were laughing together at the crosswalks. I really love Berkeley recently--the restaurants & bars, the green hills in the background, the bookstores. I've been sticking around Friday evenings for dinner and a few drinks, followed by a movie. Berkeley is a lot like Cambridge: good pizza and good movie theaters. This time I skipped the movie, I didn't think I had the energy to sit through one. I went into Blake's on Telegraph, got a big table by the window (it wasn't crowded) ordered a beer and started grading. I got hungry, so I ordered a crabcake burger and onion rings.

I did something really stupid: I went to take a drink of my beer, and I spilled it all over my students' vocabulary finals. I didn't know what to do! I went and got about thirty napkins and layered them between the tests that were most soaked. I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do. They smell like dried beer, all of them. People have suggested spilling coffee on them to change the smell, or just pretending I lost them. Fuck. I graded a few more & left. I was pretty tired at that point. I fell asleep on BART and forgot to transfer so I ended up at the Oakland Coliseum, then made my way back home.

Saturday morning I woke up to Michelle calling & we talked for a long time. I borrowed Albert's bike to go to Arizmendi where I got a pear-blackberry scone and an espresso and read a little bit of Look Homeward, Angel, which I'm reading now. Jamaica told me I, in particular, should read it. She said that in a meeting about my autobiography for her class, which she clearly hadn't read. Haha, she kept like obviously changing the subject any time I asked her about it, or she would quickly flip through and find some really unimportant passage, like an offhand comment about my dog, and then talk to me about it as though it were the turning point of my life. I liked her even better after that meeting.

After Arizmendi I biked over to Green Apple to look for a book, which I didn't find, but I got a cheap world map for my classroom. Then I biked over to Trader Joe's for some groceries. I got home and was feeling a little sick, so I made lunch and watched Amelie. Audrey Tautou, how can I not fall in love with you every time I watch it?? Amelie reminds me of Isheh: it was one of her favorite movies, if not her single favorite. At the time I hadn't seen it, but now I understand how perfectly it fits her. I hope you're reading, Isheh. I think about you a lot. I have a student whose name is pronounced like yours but is spelled differently: Ayesha.

Saturday night I had planned on staying in, but there was a guest-list-only party at a club in the city, and obviously I was on the guest list, so I went over there with Albert. It was a friend of Austin's throwing the party, because he was starting a t-shirt line. I was still feeling sick, but it was fun talking with Austin while he was drunk. We got back to the apartment and Albert made Austin a cheese qusadilla. He ate it and fell asleep on the couch.

Troubled sleep Saturday night. My throat was sore and it was too cold in my room. I woke up late this morning because of it. Made breakfast of a couple of fried eggs, toast, and orange juice. It was all pretty tasteless. God, I feel awful. I could hardly do anything today, I felt cold and tired all day. I slept from 6 pm - 11, shivering and headached. I'm worried because a couple weeks ago, when I was camping with Albert in Big Sur, I got a tick in my side, and when I went to the doctor they said that if I were infected with anything, symptoms would start to show up in a couple weeks--i.e. now. I hope I'm just sick normally and that it's not because of the tick bite. Luckily there's no school tomorrow. It's a work day to get our first semester grades in on Tuesday.

K-mas

K-mas yells Dude! in a way that's ever-so-slightly carefully enunciated, just like an extra tenth of a second holding the word for emphasis. His face is dark, burnished, with deep red on the cheek bones, and wide arcs swinging under his eyes, uncharacteristically prominent for a 16 year old. Sometimes his look is seeking. Sometimes his look is a shove. Sometimes he would put his eyes toward that ground and say Just fucking kick me out then. He says hello to me every time I see him in the hallway & you'd say he was a model of respect and warmth. In an SST meeting with him and his grandmother, discussing his failing all of his classes, he spent the entire time making paperclip sculptures on a magnetic paperweight. The students make fun of his weight and the heavy way he carries himself, they call him a gorilla. It's affectionate, I think. I'm not kidding; I'm really not sure. He's friends with a lot of the other students in SSJE. According to an SSJE mother, her son and K-mas stay on the phone all night.

Once I was going to play a pickup basketball game with him and some of the other students, but we couldn't get a court. One of the other students had to go home; I asked K-mas if he had to leave as well and a student joked, 'Ha, he never goes home. He lives at Berkeley High.' Another time, I had told him to leave my classroom, I don't remember why, and as he was walking out he said to me Why don't you go home and cry to your fucking boyfriend. Another time he made a rare comment on something we were discussing in class. He gave this beautifully thoughtful answer, unsure at first, but I coached him through it--I don't remember what we were talking about. After class I put my hand on his shoulder as he was leaving and told him that he had done a good job, that I wanted to see more of that, and he kind of half-smiled and said Thanks without really looking back, he was focused on his friends and the hallway.

K-mas is his nickname. Today he physically assaulted our math teacher, Darin. The details are unclear. The school will probably expel him. Which is ironic, because just last week--after the meeting I described in my last post--we were sitting around discussing K-mas, who we said was failing all of his classes & unreachable, and a distraction, even a threat, for other students. We were strategizing ways to get him out of our school, but we kept running into roadblocks.

That sound, it's the whiskey bottle against the bathtub

Here I am: I'm in an SST meeting for one of my students, K.B., whose mother wants her switched into the other section of SSJE. Behind me there's a window that looks out behind the school, and this is the fourth floor. It doesn't, but for some reason the window seems to have a white wood border in my mind, like a frame. There are white boxy buildings with black shapes sticking out, behind the school, going out into the Berkeley hills. I've set a maroon spiral notebook on the table next to me. My job in this situation is to offer input on K.B.'s behavior and the quality of her work, to parse the outcomes of moving K.B. to the other section--will it work for her, for other students, but I can't concentrate on that. I'm looking around the room at each of the people. We're sitting in a circle, except for Maggie, who's leaning against the counter. Andy. Kate. K.B. Erica, the new counselor. K.B.'s Mom. Maggie. I'm thinking, what if, on my first day of college, five years ago, I could see this scene. Who are these people? What is this room? This reminds me of a poem. It takes place in Florence, where I've lived. The speaker passes out in a pizza restaurant, and just after she comes to, the lights go out, and she's there in the pitch black, and the last line, which I now realize I've memorized, is "where are we anyway, and who, and what, and why?" Here. Look. What I'm showing you, it's me. I'm in this meeting, looking out the window, then at each of the people, then I'm reminded of the poem, except I cannot remember where I read that poem, what book it's in. So I start going through the catalog in my mind, book by book, thinking of where it could be, and I need to know the answer, I need to be sure of it, my memory hasn't been as reliable recently, I can't remember quotes or what I did a certain night in Hong Kong, I can't think about anything else until I locate where I read this poem, because I know, it's in my mind somewhere, I need to know. Someone asks me a question in the meeting, except I'm scrambling to know what fucking book that poem is in, what book is it in, is it in that Mark Strand anthology, now I'm trying to speak to K.B.'s situation, except it's messy or like a fucking recording because where did I read that god damn poem! It's like I can't find my wallet when I swear it was right on the bookshelf. It replaces all other thoughts. Except, it's not that I even want to find the poem, I just need to know where I read it. And now I'm angry and scared: why can't I concentrate on my job? Why can't I remember? Is my memory getting weaker? Why do I need to look out this window to feel better. Okay. Okay. If I can't remember where I read that poem, I can write somewhere to describe that window. If I can give that image to someone, because it meant something to me. But that's wrong. I don't know. Wallace Stevens said that the problem with imageism was that all objects are not equal. Did he say that in a poem? & it comes to me that all reading is research. All speaking is research. Who am I? I'm trying to find how to tell you.