This is just to say

It's so hard to be a teacher sometimes when students forget you're a person and hurt you deeeeeep and you have to show up the next day and then the day after that until they graduate and keep caring about each of them and support their learning as if nothing happened.

That's all.

In Homer's Birthplace...

We were city kids, from a city of three million. (For some reason, many people do not imagine a country that is in -or near?- the Middle East as having such big cities. I guess I was supposed to live in a yurt with mud walls, and ride camels.) Alas, there were no apple orchards for us, no tall grass in which to dream, play, or discover sexuality hidden from our parents, hidden from the world. We did not run around and play cowboys and Indians in the woods, pleasantly ignorant of political correctness. We played lastik. We went to tuhafiyeci and got meters of rubber band women used to reline the belt of loose cotton panties that no longer sat tightly around their waists. We tied a knot and there it was, hours of jumping lastik. Two girls stood about two meters from each other, with the lastik around their ankles, then we moved up to the knees, then our waists… Pull up your skirt and jump as high as you can. There was silent competition between the best friends, relieved only when the lastik broke from the strain. Our imagination was limited by tall concrete buildings. We never saw beyond our rooms, beyond imagining we were Sabrina from Charlie’s Angels, or the singer with the beads in her hair on the Eurovision Song Contest.

I wished for a big enough earthquake that would flatten the entire city without injuring anyone. Maybe city planners would do a better job the second time around, and my city would not look like crooked adolescent teeth that desperately need braces.

We were city kids; we created our own beauty. My best friend Ayse and I discovered the genre of Urban Magic Realism through experience, not literature. We sat on the steps and leaned against a door of an old house in Alsancak; it opened for us. We went in, as if it was our own house; we took pictures maybe, or just told stories about it, or just referenced it as a part of another story. Urban Magic Realism. We stayed up all night when Izmir got hit with a 5.8 earthquake, and felt estranged from the American exchange student Mike, who pointed out this was like Christmas in New York. Mike's simile had no part in what we experienced standing right next to him that night. What we saw was Izmir Magic Realism, and New York had no part in our Magic. We got over Mike pretty soon after that.

Then I learned to recognize the "haiku moments," which unfortunately got much easier to perceive after I left Turkey. On one summer visit, I went to the Turkish equivalent of DMV to get my license renewed, except DMV would never have two men chatting about their army days and the people they knew in common while doing their duty, with çay in hand and a plateful of watermelons behind the desk that looked as red as I am sure they tasted. That was a haiku moment. At night, I realized I was the only one in the water as the sun was setting beyond the sea-sky. I dove in, looked up to the surface of the Aegean Sea from underneath it, orange and green-gray, and I knew I had come home. That was a haiku moment.

So in a way, you could say things did not happen in Turkey if you were from there, but I would disagree. We made things happen; we actualized stories by paying attention to what could be possible. As soon as we got sophisticated enough to understand and recognize irony, we had a lot of stories to tell, all set in Izmir.

May it not be the last.

Just got home from the feast. I'll probably still be full when I wake up tomorrow morning. In related news, this year might in fact be the first year that I did not get any "jokes" about whether or not Turks eat turkey on Turkey Day in Turkey and its many lame variations. May it not be the last. Today, I am thankful for having hope that Americans' sense of humor is improving.

I am also thankful for my life, with all its ups and downs. When I just go through the simple facts of my daily life and of how I have come to be where I am today, there is so much to be grateful for. One of those things is you.

tk

Thought of the day:

Doesn't it seem odd that we pay money to have someone look at our "private parts"?

I'm thinking Kaiser should be paying ME money for the privilege.

Not forgetting

I don't think anyone's reading this, so I don't have to worry about being inarticulate, right?

Right.

I wonder what it takes to forget. Biologically, psychologically...
Now I really understand "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."
Sometimes I want to manipulate time change not the what but the when.
I wish for the chance to fast forward the lives of people I love in vain so they can reach a point where they love themselves at last, and come back to me in the present with that knowledge.
...
Is that too much to ask?

closing

...

I miss seeing your smile, smiling your eyes, eyeing your laugh, laughing your sleep, sleeping our worries.

tk

I have decided...

...that staying up too damn late for my own good is good for me.

Back up...

Such a busy, full weekend. A long dinner with a friend, then a housewarming party on Friday (both activities involved a good amount of sangria/red wine). Saturday, open house for prospective students and parents -- I have to say, surprisingly enough after all that wine drinking the night before, I kicked ass. I taught a mini-lesson that encouraged an amazing 8th grader girl to shut down a rich, white, entitled man with a much more intelligent and articulate comment than he could ever think up in response to a Genny Lim poem we read. The lesson also moved two parents to tears at the end of class (one Chinese born, the other a white parent to an adopted Chinese girl) -- not out of boredom, thankfully, but because it was an emotional topic for both of them. This was the most (the only?) meaningful dog-and-pony show I have ever had in my seven years. They ought to pay teachers more, seriously. Well, they should at least pay me more anyway. Heh.

Saturday night was also surprisingly wonderful. Good cheese, good wine, good friends, etc. Goodness right down to the etc. Went to bed sometime closer to daylight than to midnight like the good times of the summer in VT that I miss immensely. I'll sleep when I'm dead, I guess. Or maybe I will stay up even then, too, seeing how good it feels sometimes not to sleep.

I suppose it's time to get some grading done at last.

I needed this

As much as I can't wait to move out into a one bedroom apartment, I do have kickass housemates. Tonight, Logan made us pozole to observe El Dia de Los Muertos; I helped (him and myself) by cleaning while he was cooking so we wouldn't have a big mess in the kitchen by the time he was done. While we waited for our dinner, we made an altar for the day of the dead in our living room. I finally made myself dig up an old letter Charlie wrote to me so I could put it on the altar. As soon as took the letter out of the envelope, saw his handwriting, and read the first sentence, however, I started crying, so I just put the letter and the envelope (with random shit pasted on it in true Charlie fashion) on the altar without re-reading it all. CJ and Melissa came out and added photos of their friends and family; then, we "introduced" all the photos and objects on the altar to each other. Twenty minutes later, I had an amazing bowl of pozole and a glass of wine in front of me, and I felt deeply happy, grounded, and connected to my own self for the first time in too long.

I miss getting mail that has no form in cyberspace.

I miss seeing an address that helps me locate a handwriting.

I miss seeing the handwriting that helps me remember a smile.

I miss envelopes, which I sometimes open gently, with the care of a woman from a different time and a different place, or which -on different occasions- I tear open with the anticipation of what is enveloped.

I miss stamps touched by a loving hand, sometimes a tongue (so much love to bear the contact between tongue and unsavory glue).

I even miss postcards that reduce the rituals of reading to a mere act of turning over a picture.

Maybe I even miss your handwriting, your smile, your hands, your love, your words, you (turning over, with anticipation).

The teachings of Dolores Park

Ever notice how dogs just cut to the chase? When a dog passes by another dog, it just walks right up and sniffs the other dog's butt. It's simple. No games.

For a split second, I admire the approach; then, I decide I kinda like our games. I like "courting"; I like the (self-)denial, the daydreaming while waiting for the right moment...

Cómo es posible que sienta nostalgia por un mundo que no conocí?

How is it possible to feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?

Motorcycle Diaries

Last week's epiphany

Last week, while I was missing the friends I left after my grad school program was over and wishing they were here, I finally was able to articulate how come I have been in so many (too many) long distance relationships, which are not relationships at all — it was so satisfying to look at my life through someone else's eyes. Doing so made me appreciate the little things I take for granted in my life: live jazz shows, knowing a bunch of musicians who let me know about live jazz shows, literary events, spontaneous chats with complete strangers, great coffee shops...too many things, more than I can count or even realize and appreciate right now.

The challenge now is remembering how I was able to see my world through a tourist's eyes.

Soneta XVII, Pablo Neruda

No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.

Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.

Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,

sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.


I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Tomorrow...

I want to fly a kite. I want to run without doubting my knees. I want to make a sandcastle, begin without doubting my imagination. I want to read a poem I have never read before. I want to say Yes. I want to find Neverland.

Add one more to the list of tragedies...

A friend from way back when in 7th grade died in a car accident this week. It was her birthday, and she was engaged to be married two months from now.

Anyone got any good news? Please?

In threes...

Charlie died a few weeks ago. The woman I used to call my surrogate mother at work died yesterday of cancer. And I got some news about another recent graduate .

I am ready for better health in the world.

Atonement on Yom Kippur, Parts I and II.

Dedication

The fact that I
am writing to you
in English
already falsifies what I
wanted to tell you.
My subject:
how to explain to you
that I don't belong to English
though I belong nowhere else,
if not here
in English.

:: Gustavo Pérez Firmat ::


I.
I was fifteen and four years into learning English when I asked for the antonym of sin. Maybe I ought to have questioned that this was a question that had the power to stump the adults in my life... The best they could come up with was "favor" as if that was a favor, an inaccuracy in diction, a construction of verbal fiction in my then non-fiction world of fifteen. When you're fifteen years into the world, sin seems a simple enough word. Wrong is wrong, and see, wrong doesn't yet feel so right that you wonder who set up these dichotomies in the first place when you look at the mirror and see your face in the morning because when you are fifteen, it's already hard to see your face in the mirror no matter what the time of day. And when I was fifteen, it was easy enough to sin against the protagonist of this non-fiction book translated from the Turkish by the author into a language that is nobody's mother tongue, in a country with the population of one…

Yes, when you are fifteen, it's easy enough to sin.


II.
Today I wonder what it takes to forgive myself for sinning by giving more love than I could ever ask for. I was strong: my own country with its borders wide open for all refugees vulnerable enough to seek a haven on this land, this olive skin that bears a hint of the silver green of the trees I saw on clandestine road trips along the Aegean Sea, the home that will always be my destiny -if not my destination away from this alien nation whose language I know but never fully understand-. My borders were wide open for all refugees – no passport or visa necessary, no lines to stand in behind the red line, no fingerprints on pads that never get disinfected between scans, no Internal Naturalization Service to force assimilation into unnatural self-selected isolation. I was strong, my borders wide open; I let the exiles ask me questions upon entry. “Do you feel home?” a nomad asked as he entered, and I answered a different question because I did not know what home felt like: “I feel whole.” But maybe that was an honest lie and I will atone for my tone and my paradoxes tonight.

Today I wonder what it takes to forgive myself for sinning by giving more love than I could ask for. I wonder what it takes to be strong enough to ask; answers are easy to give when someone else has already posed the questions. And I need to forgive me for giving by sinning for more love than I could ever be given from nomads running from questions about their own living.

What I decided to say at the memorial service...

Dear Charlie—

I don't know where to begin, so in true English teacher form, I'll go with the in medias res opening; I'll start in the middle.

It is the middle of the night; my contacts are too dry for comfort, and I am counting on their dryness to keep my tears back. It's hard to write to you knowing I won't get a response for the first time even though I know that somewhere, you still have a stack of self-addressed stamped envelopes in my handwriting -stationery included- -- my graduation present to you. It was really my graduation present to myself, you realize...No, I take that back. I think we both benefited from these epistolary exchanges. There is something grounding about writing a letter.

I remember your letters well even though I haven't been able to bring myself to look at them again just yet. I remember your apologies for your illegible handwriting in each letter even though I was able to read every word. There was something hurried in your handwriting, like there were too many thoughts in your head for you to articulate on paper, like your physical body could not keep up with your mind as you were writing. Like your body could not keep up with your mind. I think I am realizing the larger implications of this observation just now.

(I was wrong about dry contacts -- now I am crying.)

I also remember you signed your letters with the words "Your friend" right above your name. I often thought about what you meant. Earlier today, I realized that despite my sustaining the role of "teacher" even after you graduated, you understood you were no longer a student writing letters. Today, I realized that "Your friend" was probably your acknowledgment that I could learn from you as much as you learned from me.

And I did learn from you.

It's hard to forget my C period class the fall of my first year at Urban. You, Nick, Chip, Bryant, Daniel Brody & Daniel Mitchell in Advanced Composition... I remember almost hearing crickets in the room when I asked a question about the reading from the previous night. I also remember talking to you two years later -- you told me you had learned so much from that class, and that I "really need to keep teaching it." I would like to think Advanced Comp is alive and well (and even stronger) now because of your emphatic conviction in its ability to transform, which you passed on to me.

Maybe a teacher is effective to the extent that she is able to see in her student the person he wants to become before he has become it. I think those letters with my handwriting on the envelopes kept coming because you knew that I could see you as you could imagine yourself. And now I believe that you signed your letters "Your friend" because you saw me as I wanted to be seen as well.

Caitlin once told me that you really respected me for my integrity. I looked at her puzzled, with that "what are you talking about?" look on my face. You had told her about a day in Advanced Comp. when I refused to say "I promise" because I said that I believe my word ought to be enough. It's strange seeing yourself through someone else's eyes. I still don't make promises, and I still try to make sure that I say things as long as I intend to follow through with them. So I will say this: I'm a shitty correspondent, but I will write again even when I know you won't ever write back. There is something grounding about writing a letter.

I hope you are at peace, grounded, and free wherever you are.

Your teacher, your student, and yes, your friend...

tk

Re: "cry loud tears through louder screams"

I.
I cry tears that have no season yet long for June
so patient they wane with the moon.


II.
(I ain't sharin')


III.
Tie this city's thick fog to my tears
& weave an indigo blanket
the lark will lie asleep my sweet
until we're ready to wake it.

A gift I received this week...

"she had eyes
like two turntables
mix(h)er
in between
my dreams and reality
blend in ancient themes
the bas(e)is of isis
cross-faded to ankh
the beat drops
like a cliff
over looking my heart"

Saul Williams

The Milky Way never seemed this milky

One thing the Middlebury College BLSE campus has access to is a wide-as-far-as-the-eyes-can-see upside down panorama of the Milky Way.

I took a walk in the dark by myself tonight, and wondered if other people ever get used to seeing so many fireflies at once, flying all around me as though they were attempting to form an itinerant, terrestrial copy of the constellations above.

Last night in Israel

12:14 am

My visit has felt the most productive at nights, somehow. So far, I have gone to an awesome dance show by the Batsheva Dance Company (which featured some surprising nudity) with my aunt, spent time at family dinners, taught my cousin’s 4-year-old daughter how to take pictures with a digital camera (and watched her guffaw when I showed her a video clip of her dancing and being silly), and smoked a hookah and drank arrack with my uncle, and watched nighttime surfers ride the waves during dinner.

This is my last night in Israel, and a special one.

After a day of fighting bureaucracy with bureaucracy and losing nonetheless (Canadians Score with American Bureaucratic Aid; Turkish Alien Reports She Feels ‘Defeated Yet Undeterred’), I took a cab out to Nahalat Binyamin, a street of artisans. It made me happy to recognize a couple of the artisans from a year and a half ago, and to notice a couple of them for the first time, like the old man whom I watched for a while as he blew glass figurines. I met my aunt for lunch, and she left me with the same charge as my grandmother – to spend some money on myself. It’s always easier for me to spend money on other people, but I managed to find a couple of things to buy. I have such a particular taste, it seems, that my family members have begun leaving it up to me to buy myself presents. Works for me. Works for them. Sometimes, it turns out, I prefer not to be surprised.

After my first day hanging out around town by myself (at last!), I felt exhausted, dehydrated, and heavy with a humongous headache. A brief afternoon nap, dinner with the little cousins, and finally, my grandmother and I had some quiet time alone. We lay on a sofa each in the living room, the house completely dark, and after I told her about my day fighting Canadian bureaucracy, she told me about how she and my grandfather took a trip to North America with a tour, but had to be left behind when it was time to fly to Toronto on the way to see the Niagara Falls because the travel agent failed to realize their passports were Turkish and not Israeli like the others and that they would need visas. The travel agent drove to the consulate that day and got them their visas. Still, a day behind, they finally caught up with the rest of the group in Toronto (after struggling tremendously to find their way without a tour guide who speaks English, and managing to communicate by sign language and in Spanish as much as possible). “We got to see the Niagara Falls only in pictures,” my grandmother laughs now; she said she was crying at the London airport trying to figure out how to get to their gate to catch the flight in Toronto. They got a free round-trip ticket to Turkey out of the travel agent’s oversight. Then, she told me how she, my grandfather, and my aunt (who had just finished seventh or eighth grade) took a trip around Europe by car and drove around Italy, France, Spain, and England. She said my grandfather didn’t have much knowledge of how to go around Europe because they didn’t have large highways in Turkey back then, but one thing he did have was courage. “I don’t know how he managed it,” she said, “but we traveled by car for about two months…except in London. They drive on the opposite side there, so he didn’t use the car.” She told me about how they traveled all over Turkey by car, about how my grandfather always took them somewhere every holiday (I made a mental note to ask my mom about it, who, I’m surprised, has never mentioned it to me), and about driving all over Israel, too, when they moved here, about how he got into a car accident while visiting Israel when a truck ran a red light and hit my grandfather, how he had to stay in the hospital for two weeks having suffered broken ribs and a leg injury (not to mentioned a totaled car he had miraculously left alive), but got in a car and drove as soon as he could to my grandmother’s amazement.

I had no idea my grandfather was so adventurous. All I remember is a quiet man who sat in his chair in the corner and gave one-word answers to my attempts at engaging him in reminiscing, storytelling.I always cry when I think about it, and it was so wonderful to learn —even if through second-hand stories—that he was different, and that he was quiet because he was really sick and he became withdrawn because he endured so many different ailments silently. (Of course I am crying now.) I always thought that Moshe, my cousin who died in a motorcycle accident three years ago, was the one person in my family who shared the same adventurous spirit, the same wanderlust with me. I always thought my mother’s side of the family was the more “settled” and “grown up” side. I’ve never been happier to have been so wrong.

The latest on Pelagic vs. American bureaucracy

I would just like to share what I found out today.

The American consulate in Turkey requires that every person purchase a "Pin number" for $16. The pin number allows an applicant for a visa to make an appointment for an interview and even to get some information (such as what to bring to the appointment). Am I the only person who finds this new policy absolutely ridiculous? Oh, let me mention, too, that each pin number is good for one day only. If you forgot to ask a question about the documents you need, or something else came up, too bad, that will be another $16... The person on the phone very politely refused to talk to me because I hadn't paid enough money to be asking questions.

Once again, I associate the US with a subtle but impregnable classism (not to mention the obvious xenophobia) tied to its bureaucracy.

OOF.

7

Today, I saw my 6th class of Urban School seniors graduate.
Hugs were given. Tears were shed. Teachers were thanked. I was humbled.

I remember being the kid who spoke at graduation over a decade ago.
I remember having dreams that seemed out of reach, geographically impossible.
I remember believing that if I wanted something enough, I could make things happen.

I have been a teacher for seven years. I have been living in the US with no family near for eleven.

Call it arrogance, call it hubris (if anything, it may be genetics)...I'd say believing in yourself blindly, stubbornly is a worthwhile cause in itself.

I ought to feel so much more Turkish

I finally smoked a hookah yesterday. I suppose I ought to feel so much more Turkish today.

I don't.

I feel like a lame Turk if anything: I had to move to SF to smoke a hookah and it was apple flavored!?!

Othello seeping in...

I had a dream last night that took all my unexpressed thoughts, worries, dilemmas about who/what my community is, what I get out of teaching at a privileged independent high school, how my involvement in conversations about race is benefiting me and hurting me at the same time, and gave them a story with which to express them.

In my dream, I was teaching Othello to my juniors (as I am in the process of doing in my conscious world's Shakespeare class). The problem was, I was feeling very personally connected to the discussion of the text, to our comments on Othello, and getting very emotional as I was standing in front of the classroom facilitating an intellectual discussion. Somehow, I became aware that I was getting less and less competent in the eyes of my students, less and less effective as a teacher. In my mind, I was thinking I really ought to talk with my academic dean about what is happening to me and brainstorm some options; I was thinking maybe I should not be teaching these kids anymore. So in comes the music teacher. He is young and a boyish goof. He takes over my class, and I stay in the quiet role of just writing the salient parts of the students' comments on the white board as I usually do, but this time, I do it quietly without responding to the students, without posing them complicating questions. I listen, I write, I stay quiet. But I am thinking the music teacher is doing it all wrong; he is cracking up cheezy jokes and trivializing Othello. I am upset, but the students respond to his "jokes." Ten minutes to the end of class, I decide to leave. I give my -incompetent but well-liked- sub a hug and thank him in the doorway. I start crying and I can't stop. Before we part, though, he cracks up another flippant comment, so I take my arms off his body, look at him, no longer crying, and tell him that's it, he pissed me off, and I am staying. I take back my class for the last ten minutes, and I keep teaching in the style that made me think I was no longer able to do my job effectively, and I lose the students' interest left and right, but I stubbornly keep doing what I am doing until class is over. Only one student stays to hear me finish my sentence; others are out of there as soon as the class is over. I am powerless, and I know I need to go talk to my academic dean.

I leave the classroom. A student of color walks up to me over lunch and asks me how I liked living in Turkey while I was growing up there. S/he (the student was two students at once during the conversation, one male, one female, both students of color) asks me questions, and tells me s/he is thinking about going to Turkey for college next year. I ask if it is a year-long exchange program, but the student says no, s/he is thinking about going for four years at least. My heart sinks, and I think "you poor thing, you are going to choose to live in a strange country like Turkey, so unlike your country?" I tell my student, "You saw me in class; you know..." And I add this comment either in my head or aloud to the student, I can't remember which: "it will never be easy, and you will never fit in."

on education(al paradoxes)

education is the only medium through which I can connect with this country. It is also the medium through which I can, in some ways, fight this country. That's a big topic. And in that paradox is a sense of impotence, a sense of humility, a recognition of how tiny what I do is, and how it is so little in the face of something so unwieldy. I teach in an independent school, for one thing. Instead of teaching kids to value themselves elsewhere, I try to teach kids who have the privilege of never devaluing themselves some compassion so they can be global citizens instead of selfishly powerful. I think there is a healthy way of being selfish, the generous selfishness with the ultimate goal of altruism, or doing something for community, for social equity and justice. There is also the "it all ends with my own happiness" school of selfishness. Sometimes I wonder if I delude myself into thinking I am generous in my choices. Some days I wonder if in leaving home and family behind I actually took the easy way out. There are days I can't tell what I am doing here when it is clear to me that I will never fully belong here.

There are days I wished I stayed in a neighborhood like Holyoke, Massachusetts to work with the inner city youth. There are days I wished I stayed in a neighborhood like East Palo Alto to work with kids who live in trailers and stay at school until they get kicked out because they know they'll get into trouble if they go home. And then there are days I know so many doors would close in my face because of the public school bureaucracy when I tried to teach kids to like themselves, to respect themselves, when I showed them I like and respect myself (the teacher I worked with in East Palo Alto got fired for doing exactly that). I want to reach all these barrios and ghettos and reservations and the self-confined wealthy neighborhoods at once. I want us all to ask for more than mere survival.

A bright student of mine pointed out in our dicussion of Alexie's stories last term that survival is the bare minimum, not the ultimate goal. I don't think she was being naive or disrespectful; I think she genuinely acknowledged the success in surviving. Her caution was against being satisfied with survival alone, against not demanding what is right for everyone to demand.

I talked with Sherman Alexie once. I told him my students wanted to know where the hope was amidst the portrayal of the hardships of reservation life, which confirmed a lot of stereotypes and made them uneasy. I told him I had my own answer, and I wanted to hear his. He said they are not mere stereotypes; they are the realities. He said the hope is in his writing these stories. "That's what I thought," I told him. So once again I go back to the hope being in the creative process. And once again I go back to the mural - I saw the hope in the hands of the man, and I have to believe in that hope. If I don't believe that the artist's perception of hope and the artist's expression of that hope through art are credible, what would remain? What would be the goal of my educating people?

I want...

...my days to slow down/my work to get done/my room to be clean/my knees to stop hurting/personal connection in real time/touch/eye contact/to see wrinkles around a smile I am familiar with/hear a voice come to my ears in sound waves not on a telephone wire, not from cell phone to cell phone/conversations that matter/to stop multitasking when having conversations that matter/personal connection in real time/touch/eye contact/smile/voice/slow days/slow nights/real time/unAmerican time/real time/to be/slowly.