Pox Pout

Got chickenpox. Writing this in Word, but let the damn self-correctness be. Don’t really want to be writing but don’t really want to be doing anything but lying on my bed, but don’t really want to be doing that. Sitting in any place for very long I start to feel the sand gathering over me. I’ll be a man-shaped dune. You can’t find me. No one can find anyone including themselves, but that’s normal. Not a depressing thought, just…trudging through that thought. Life is like following a treasure map that that leads you on vast quests with only clues at the end. Keep going. You’re almost somewhere worth being, you’re almost happy. Sounds self-absorbed high school blah.

So!? If I wrote poetry it would sound like high school crap. I’m no poet but, point is, some problems came up around then that still haven’t been solved. Same old subject matter. Is it all about happiness? If I was happy would I be writing, would I be in a trance riding chemical waves, hitching my soul to a butterfly, hoping it won't be eaten by a crow? When I don’t feel happy I wonder what it is and how to get it and keep it. When I feel happy its because I feel really close to someone. Most of the time that happens with a girl, sometimes with a guy, and every once in a while that Someone is God.

Right now I, um….don’t feel close—enough—to enough. Being cooped up in a house day after day, sweaty, scrungy, and…poxy (chicken style) well that gets old fast. I should be reading all the time. Read read read! Haven’t done that yet. Maybe no energy, maybe no attention span. Maybe some of both, more of the latter. Oh so sick of tv. Hate hate hate tv. Hate the tv. Kill it. It should be swallowed by the earth like Carey’s house at the end of the movie. With fire.

Oh, oh, oh….. I’m going over the stuff I’ve got going (nothing) and the stuff I’m planning (everything) and I’m like “that’s all good” and “I’ll be so busy with all that I won’t have time to sulk” and “don’t worry just do the next thing. The next thing. The next thing.

I’ll be a teacher…teaching kids. Will they let me do that? Oh boy, I know I can do a good job but will I? The whole things pretty nebulous right now. I guess a couple months from now if I’m actually teaching with a regular schedule and fitting everything else that’s important and necessary and fun in where I can, maybe my life will feel normal and structured and leading toward something tangible on earth. Maybe that will be good. Maybe that will be conducive to happiness.

Not to say I’m not stoked about he prospect of being a teacher, just very afraid of failure and rejection. And middle school kids. Petrified. Not really but man let’s get on with this and see what happens!! Transcripts go off in the mail tomorrow and I apply online with the fee, so then were off! They say within three weeks I can start hunting. But then it’s Christmas vacation. We’ll see. Good thing I didn’t get a holiday job yet. Woulda had it for a week and had to quit. You don’t call in sick for two weeks on a holiday job. But what’s left after this episode? Not money. Actually since you’re here reading this you clearly care, so I was wondering if for just a short while, I mean briefly, if I could just sorta borrow like, y’know, just…oh, never mind.

Music. I looooove music. I listened so much in China. Don’t know what I would have done without my trusty headphones and CD player. Without them on, I wouldn’t have picked up my butt and started writing tonight, that’s for certain. It definitely a night for keeping Massive Attack’s Protection on repeat. I love this Light My Fire rendition. Plus the title song.i just frikkin love Massive Attack.

I had the desire to reach out, connect, express. Putting words on the screen always seems to address that, fill something up inside. Damn lonely thing too. All this and there’s still just a screen in front of me, people watching TV in the background. Long road ahead. Where’s my hugs and kisses? Where’s my lullabies and sweet nothings whispered softly? Where’s my slow dancing and eye-swimming? I’m worthy! I can love with the best of them! There’s no length I won’t go to to make someone happy, when I know they want it, they’re quietly waiting, they want to love me in return. why can’t normal frienship, family bonds feel more like that? Why can’t we live like the happy aliens? Why is that desire so strong that all the other stuff about job and money and stuff and this and that—the whole rest of life!—just feel altogether like such a nondescript, utilitarian floor to stand on so that I have the chance to really live, which is to touch souls!? Why is that so hard to do? I’m really hungry for it these days. One way or another, that’s what what I’m looking for. And I don’t want a girlfriend out of it, thank you! At least not now. I just wanna go a little higher with someone else. sometimes this life is just too long. Can I move on to the next world now? That’s really what I’m looking for. It lasts forever, so aiming toward it is a good thing, but it offers such delayed gratification.

Times like this are for praying. Do it and it works. It makes it better. I’m gonna go do that. Pray. Seems like the best people that lived figured out that was the only way they could make it through this world. Praying all the time, in their ways. Haven’t tried that yet. sometimes i feel like reaching out to God is like being a diver stuck on the bottom pulling on the cord to give the signal "pull me up!". but the cord is wrapped around a big 'ol coral reef. you gotta keep pullin if you wanna get anywhere, but it's more to get unstuck than to really start raising your altitude.

Hello Again

Hey yo, I’m back. Most of you reading this have heard a fair amount from me over the electrowaves but none of it has been inside the blogosphere. Well, I’m back to blogging. Guess that means I have to have things to talk about. Hmmmm…..

Well, this entry won’t be very ambitious, but I’ll get you up to date o a few things. I just got all the stuff that I need together, so tomorrow (I just forgot how to spell tomorrow. Bet that doesn’t happen with Spanish.) I’ll begin the process of application, etc. which will lead me, I hope, by early January to get a position as a middle school teacher somewhere round here. There are a number of openings even at this time of the year, so I just have to find the right one. The program I’ll be participating in is called “iteachtexas.” Basically, there are two parts to it. One is an online curriculum that must be completed within 6 months. The other is field experience as the “teacher of record.” So I get the internship stuff at the same time I’m being the teacher and getting paid with benefits! Sounds nice, huh? It feels right for me right now. The only downside is, of course, jumping into teaching without any experience as a teacher here. I did get some quality experience in China which will no doubt help me tons, but China’s a li’l different. Especially in the classroom. (why am I capitalizing so much? Oh, I’m doing this in Word and it’s doing it for me! That was weird.)

So anyways, I’ll be doing that instead of grad school. I wanna know what it’s likee to be a teacher before I jump headlong into something else. I got the feeling in China that I could really dig being a teacher long term, just not an oral English teacher in China. The interaction with the kids, being this consistent part of their life to whatever extent, the performance and comedy aspect, those appeal to me. Grading papers sucks though. But maybe it would suck less over time. Whatever happens, I’m stoked to try this out. I’ll probably end up teaching for a year and a half and then we’ll see.

Otherwise…..well, yesterday I was sick all day with a 102 degree fever. I slept all day. I was still kinda sick today and I slept all day. Plus I drank lotsa water and took some medicine. Now I’m doin fine. Just came outta nowhere.

We had our real Thanksgiving on Saturday because everyone was available. Tomorrow the actual day but it will only be mom, mike, me, grandma, and mike’s parents. Everyone else is spreading out here and there. My sister’s on call. She’s a doctor.

So that’s enough for now. I’m feelin pretty good, though I’ve been susceptible to the gloomy weather. Here and there I feel overwhelmed by life and not happy, but it passes, and I go back to feelin real good about the way things are goin! Talk to ya later.

Love,
dan

And it was gooood!

Welcome to my new creation, the blobular lifeform that is my.....blog. this is a genaration of such internetty, functional names of things isn't it? for instance, our President's official title is "The President of the United States," but the much more apt name for him is simply, "Dubya." while those two syllables do him justice, when i think of bearing all (or 85% of all of consequence) the word "blog" just doesn't encapsulate the whole endeavor for me. all of this is being said by Ace Ventura's butt by the way...

anyways, yeah so this is my blog. WELCOOOOOOOME!!!!!!!! it's a real kick if you read every fifth word. really. i put a lot of work into this..... (snicker)

well to begin with, i actually was raised in a barn. no, but i think i was born in a hot tub. that would explain a lot, especially my keen affinity for hot bubbling clhorinated water flowing all over me, consuming me, washing me clean of all sin----oh, oh, okay i'm back, i'm back. right now you're thinking, "I'm not sure i have time for this..." time is Deutchmarks, and Deutchmarks aaaare German.

so right now i'm battling the whispy willow man called Insomnia. his crafty roots have got me by the pinky toes and aren't letting go. (knew i should have had them surgically removed. hindsights 20/20 and all...) he keeps me up all night with those creaking limbs, and during the day he summons platoons of fuzzy bunnys to nuzzle me to sleep.

it all started when i woke up and said to myself, "Ugh." then i thought, "i could happily leave China right now. there's just not enough for me here right now. i've seen it i've done it i've tasted it i've certainly smelled it. and i've loved it, indeed. but i need to move on with my life.

and i've decided to do so: I WILL BE ACCEPTED TO GRADUATE SCHOOL POSTHASTE AND UPON THE PASSING OF TWO YEARS SHALL RECEIVE THE DEGREE OF MASTERS OF SOCIAL WORK. with a concentration in counceling. i wanna be there for the young folks, basically anyone whose age starts with a "1," including, possibly 100 year-old people, but i don't know i could do for 1-year-olds, except hug them and squeeze them and call them my own! yes, my biological sun dial is... dialing. kids are the best to me right now, yet somehow...um...i can wait. when it happens though, it'll be gooooood!

so, yes, by November or January i'll be back in Texas, with some time in Washington i hope before i must scrounge up employment in Austin. i'll work on finding a groove, busting a move, got somethin ta prove, got a thorn in my hoof (that's pronounced hoove by some), but i'm going make some strides that will certainly behoove (ha haaaa!) me and hopefully lots of other people. say what you will of me, i've always longed to be a bright light in other people's lives, that is when i'm thinking about other people and not being totally self absorbed. and so we return to the title of my blog. (Monty Python? does that make it funnier?) i hope not to blather on ceaselessly on myself. though this is some nice therapy, i do want you to enjoy reading it! yet it seems a perilous affair to bring up other people and their lives here in more than passing. like gossip, which i despise. but my life is all wrapped up, thankfully, with others,' and i've few complaints about you (except that you all smell of wilderberry) so i'll find a way to gracefully make reference to your charms here. those are all i want to remember anyway, unless you start trying to sell me Cutco knives. then you've crossed the line!!! but like those blades my love for you all needs no sharpening. it only longs for use, so my highest hope(or on the top 5 list opf highest hopes) is that my chances for showing you love, and my success ratio for those times, ever increases. no joke! i love to be loved. the only thing better is to love. i'm growing up, slowly but surely (grad school! whoa...), i hope while i learn to be a man in other ways, i mainly learn to love. to live it, breath it, soak it in from man, nature, and Creator, and express it in such ways that will bring us spiraling closer together and higher and higher towards our Hearts' Desire. and if Kate Winslet is reading this, that means you to. my email is danieltaom@hotmail.com. i'm kinda hard to reach by phone. gimme a buzz.

a'ight all you crazies, lazies, hazies, and especially you rainbow daisys, i'm outta here, but i'll be back, and i'm bringin' fruit!!!

catch ya on the slip'n'slide