Friday Morning Human Offensive

Friday February 4, 2011

Thursday night I saw few ants. I thought that maybe this occupation had been too costly for them, the casualties too great. I thought they had packed and gone.
Friday morning I realized that I was wrong. Not only were they back full force (had they taken the night off?), they had violated the previously agreed upon understanding which dictated that they would stick to the walls and corners of my house and not march across open spaces. Specifically, my bathroom floor, over my olive green woven mat where I keep my naked feet warm on cold mornings, especially before 6 a.m. And here I thought I had given up.

I remembered that Dad used to wet a sponge with bleach and wipe down counters on warm, sticky, summer days in upstate New York. I remembered the chemicals I had: Clorox Anit-Hongo spray. I went to town and did not feel remorse.

This evening there is not a wiggly ant to be seen.

On a more mysterious note: I arrived home last night to find bird poop on my kitchen counter. How did this happen? I leave my windows open during the day but can not imagine a bird finding its way thru the small space between the glass panes. I saw no bird – it must have, improbably, found its way out again, but not before wrecking havoc on my house. Bird poop was found not only on the kitchen counter but on my bed, the dining room window and, tonight, the electric range on the stove. I picture a small bird, frantic, trapped in my house, crapping its brains out trying to find its way back home. I do hope it found its way out or else I fear that I will find a lightweight bird carcass sometime soon.

Reflections On the Death of a Community Member

Yesterday a man died – a long-standing member of the community. Today school got out at 12 for a funeral at 2. I want to say something poetic and profound, but its just not there. I want to be able to put into words what this feels like: a call at 7 p.m. Thursday, being part in a phone tree, word spreading quickly to all members of the school and community. I’ve never worked in a school that doubles as a funeral space before. The cemetery is next to the school, where we take kids sometimes for group activities.

It feels…nice. It feels like sliding over to give a stranger space on a bench. It feels like compassion.

My Bucket List

How appropriate that these are the thoughts that follow.

This is how un-cool I am:
Setting: Teacher lounge, Monteverde Friends School, Monteverde, Costa Rica
Characters: Two co-workers and myself
I sit browsing new pictures on Facebook. When I get to work before 7 a.m. I feel comfortable with a guilty peruse of Facebook by 9. I see pictures of my bad-ass sister, smiling wickedly into the camera with her father next to her. They each straddle a motorcycle – hers metallic blue, his dark red, and they’ve just gone on a joyride. I think: I love this. I think: I want this. I want to be bad-ass and joyride Florida streets with Dennis and Heather. The title of the photo album where I found these pictures is “Cross Riding with Dad off the Bucket List”.

I’m envious. I must find out everything about this, and then do it myself. I start with vocabulary.
I turn to my co-workers:
“Do you guys know anything about motorcycles?”
“No,” one of them responds. “Why, do you want to get one?”
“Well, kinda” I say, feeling a little exposed, “but that’s not why I ask. I was wondering if you knew some motorcycle terminology.”
“What?”
“What’s a bucket list?”
They laugh. “I know a bucket list to be a list of things you want to do before you die. You know, before you kick the bucket.”
Click, click, click.
“Ooohhhh….that makes a lot more sense.”

I tell my sister about my silly little mistake and she asks the question that will not leave my head all day: “Now that you know, are you going to make one?” I am immediately enthralled: of course I want to make a bucket list! Lists are my favorite things, ever. I write Ji-Soo and tell him we should write bucket lists. He finds the title a little morbid and suggests a few tamer (lamer?) possibilities. But I wonder:

-once you put an item on a bucket list, can it be taken off?
-if you die and don’t do some of the things that you’ve put on your bucket list, do you go to hell? HaHa! Just kidding – but I am overwhelmed by the idea.
-Do you actually write out a bucket list?
-What goes on a bucket list? What degree of vagueness or specificity is necessary? What degree is allowed?

I know some of you will be tempted to respond and say, “It is your bucket list, make it what you want”, but I am not interested in this. I want someone, sometwos or threes or fours or more, to tell me the rules governing their bucket lists, or why they don’t have a bucket list.
I’ve picked it up and now I can’t put it down.