10 Things I Learned About Teaching

Originally, I was going to list the top ten things I learned not to do in the composition classroom for this post. But I was being a bit down on myself that day, and I realized I learned some things that work extremely well. So, I decided to present to y'all a list of things I learned--both good and bad--and hopefully some of you experienced teachers will offer me advice. If there's one thing I can't seem to get enough of, it's teacher advice. So here goes, in no particular order.

10. Never let students revise every paper. Doing so only ensures that the teacher is always grading and the students are always turning in shitty first drafts.

9. Be OCD about your course policies and make sure you list EVERY CONCEIVABLE THING in your syllabus. I failed to list that failure to turn in one major assignment for the course would result in a no credit grade for the class and wound up doing some fancy footwork when students were surprised they couldn't pass having not even bothered doing one of the major papers.

8. Don't use blogs unless you are dedicated to keeping up with reading and commenting on them. Students get offended when you don't comment on all their posts.

7. Ignorance is often bliss. Sometimes, it's better to pretend you didn't hear what the frat boy in the back of the room said about you to his buddy. Usually, you don't want to know the reason little Johnny came to class with a black eye and busted lip.

6. Never, EVER check your comments on ratemyprofessor.com. They will only give you a misguided view of how you're performing in the classroom.

5. Make a grading rubric, share it with the class, and always remind them to check it before turning in their papers. I swear if I hear one more gripe about my "inconsistent grading" I'm going to explode.

4. Let students know you care about their ideas. The best assignment I gave this semester was a group research project where students got together and worked on developing a research question, then researching that question and presenting it to the class. They all really enjoyed working with like-minded individuals researching stuff that didn't seem like school work, like the BCS, internet pornography, and online gaming.

3. Be critical, but be positive. Sometimes I found myself writing more scathing comments on student papers than I should have. Thank God I grade in pencil. Com 1 students need guidance and nurturing more so than any other student, I think.

2. Never accept/review emailed drafts. Always have students come to your office hours with hard copies or you'll find yourself, much like I did, reading the same student's paper 10 times before you actually *grade* it.

1. Know that YOU control the classroom. You're not their friend; you're their mentor and, in Comp 1, their homeroom mom, to a certain extent. It's okay to love them, but you still must maintain an authoritative position in the classroom. (Sometimes I wasn't so good at that one...)


It was an okay semester, y'all. I loved my kids. Each and every one of them, even the frat boy in the back who cursed me under his breath. I really love teaching, and I want to do it for a long, long time. It gets in your blood, doesn't it?

How were your teaching semesters?

Thank God that's over

I survived my first teaching semester, y'all. Barely did it, but I'm here, alive and still kicking. Just not as hard. In the days since my last class's final on Wednesday I was a hot mess trying to finish all the projects up for the courses I was taking and make appearances at all the English department holiday brouhaha I felt compelled to attend. I burned my apple crisp for the potluck, drank too much at the creative writing holiday party, and had a panic attack in the wee hours of Friday morning. Don't worry, though; I went to the doctor on campus, who referred me to a psychiatrist, and now I'm properly medicated for depression and anxiety. Like every other person in America. But I feel a lot calmer now, probably because the semester is over, and I like feeling calm.

I took the weekend really easy, only venturing out on Friday to have dinner with Eric, then a trip to the dog park for an hour on Saturday and a movie last night. Eric and I saw Milk, which I thought was phenomenally done, but I think he was a bit perturbed by the gratuitous man-on-man smooching. It's an important film, I think, because it shows the history of the gay community's fight for rights in this country, and this is an important history for gay people (and everyone else) to know about. Because chances are they don't.

I'm plowing through Twilight, and though Edward Cullen makes me tingle in all the right places, I think the book would be much better if it had been more scrupulously edited. Honestly, I'm tired of the first person narrator constantly describing her vampire-lover as "breathtakingly beautiful," "godlike," and "perfectly statuesque." Too cliche, Stephanie Meyer. Let's liven the language up, even if you are writing about the living dead.

I'm busy this week saying goodbye to friends for the few weeks of Xmas break (and I'm especially sad to see at least one of them go), gearing up for the Young Writers' Institute (which I'm co-chairing this year--Steph, Monda, I'm making you proud!), and working on the syllabus for the English 102 course I designed and will be teaching next semester: Inquiry into Friendship. I also need to clean my apartment, finish my Xmas shopping, wrap presents, and pack. Headed home for the holidays on Saturday the 20th.

I'm looking forward to being home for 10 days or so more than I thought I would. I'm going to use the time to write a poem a day, watch lots of HGTV, and avoid interacting with people for a while (except, of course, for the ones I can't live without: Mom, Dad, Eric, Virignia). I'm not mad at anyone, mind you. I love you all. I just had a tiring semester jumping through social hoops and directing the department's party life. I love the job, but I need a break, some time to be a basket case on my own terms.

And I don't intend on shaving at all over the the winter break.

So, things are looking up for me. I have plans. I have friends. I have dreams. I just thank God this semester's over.

Next post: "10 Things I Learned About What NOT To Do In The Composition Classroom."

Thankful

It's been so hard to keep with with the ol' blog since school started. Teaching, studenting, social chairing, reading, writing, cooking, cleaning, whew. All these necessary distractions make Mr. Sisk a bad blogger.

Regardless of my neglectfulness, I do occasionally snatch a second to post a pithy post that some of you read and a few comment on, for which I am truly thankful. It's nice to know my words are not swallowed up by the cyber void.

Since Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and I'm going to be busy student conferencing and then trans-Tennessee driving until then, I'm stealing a moment to share what I am most thankful for this holiday season. It's important that we remember to be thankful, I think, and especially, it's important for me to be grateful for those people who have loved me enough to sacrifice their time, money, energy, and desires to get me where I am today. Here's my list, then:

1. My family--Momma, Daddy, Muffy, Pippi, Jeffrey, Lily, and everybody else who has loved me and said prayers for me and worried about me and been proud of me. A large part of what I do, I do for you.

2. My friends, past and present. Even though I've lost touch with some of the best buddies I had at Central Arkansas, I still think of them and I'm glad I've known them. They have helped make me who I am. As for the friends of Thanksgiving Present--Eric, Virginia, Charlotte, Josh, Leah, and everybody else--I love you, I'm thankful for you. I couldn't do it without you.

3. My students, bless their hearts. I am sincerely grateful for each and every one of them. They have made me kinder, stronger, better.

4. Teachers--all of them--but especially mine, past and present. The true rock stars are educators. I've said that forever, even before I was one, and I stand by that statement even firmer now. I'm thankful for men and women who sacrifice their time and energy to make kids like me better human beings.

5. Six months, same as cash and/or interest-free financing options. Because when it rains, it pours, and the truest example of adulthood, I think, is resigning oneself to paying for things oneself, even if paying for it a little each month is the only option.

6. Change

7. Travel coffee mugs

8. Not burning the first batch of cookies (finally!)

What are you thankful for?

Note on the Fridge to Nearly Every Teacher I've Ever Had

Esteemed women and men, I do not envy your position as the end of the semester looms near like a shadow in the night. I once underestimated your ability to do everything--EVERYTHING--perfectly as our time together drew to a close. "It shouldn't take him that long to grade our papers," I thought. "She should have been more prepared for that class."

And you should have been. All of you. But how could you with all you had on your plates? Papers to grade, lessons to plan, dinners to cook, families to love, mental health to maintain. When I look at the sinkful of dirty dishes, the stacks of overdue library books and ungraded essays that have taken over my living space I can do more than imagine what your homes looks like every November. I'm living your lives now, dear teachers.

Late nights and early mornings, slacks worn for the fourth time without washing, unkempt hair, pots and pots of coffee, little more to eat than meat-and-bread sandwiches and bags of M & Ms. This is our life come end of the semester. This is what teaching entails. We embody it.

Thank you, teachers, for all the work you did for me and all the work you continue to do. You don't hear those words much, usually you only hear complaints from grade grubbers, but I hope you'll hear it from me, a once-and-future grade grubbing student, a currently overwhelmed teacher.

You are all amazing.

Sincerely,
Timothy J. Sisk

Doing It Right for a Change

Y'all, I'm published! Okay, so it's an online publication, but it's still all mine. I would like to thank Dr. Stephanie Vanderslice for letting me know about the publishing opportunity with Splinter Generation. Read my poem and let me know what you think!

In other news, I'm coming down with the funk from running myself ragged with the course work and the teaching and the socializing. Snotty nose and sore throat makes Tim a sad boy. But not so sad that I didn't go out with a whole slough of folks for cheap Mexican food and half-priced Dos Equis pitchers tonight. I mean, I had to eat, right? Plus, it's against my religion to stay in on a Friday night. I have people to love on, y'all.

In the long absence since my last post, I've been busy, busy, busy: writing poems and short stories, reading about campy performance art, teaching argumentative writing to somewhat resistant-but-still-utterly-adorable college freshpeople. Spending too much time loving on friends. I'm living the dream, and I hate to think that it's going to end in six months. Here's to making it the best six months yet.

I'm on my way to bed for some much needed recuperation, but I'll share a completely endearing teacher story with you before I go:

A student confided to me in an individual conference before fall break that he felt he "just wasn't doing this college thing right." "I just don't have any friends, Mr. Sisk," he said. "I don't think I want to come back after Fall Break." His admission struck me as odd since he is one of the chattier boys in his class. In fact, I had planned to tell him he should stop talking so much in class, but my heart just melted. I couldn't scold him. I couldn't let him give up on college, especially since he tries so hard and does good work in my class. I told him that I noticed he'd been getting along with a boy he sits beside in my class, that from my end of things they looked like pretty good friends. "Ask him to go to the football game with you or go to church with him," I said, doing my best to speak to him in his language. I know his language. Well, last week I decided to hold class outside under a tree since the day was lovely and our reading dealt with defining a sense of place. Both classes did a wonderful job discussing the text (I was so proud!), and at the end of the class with the aforementioned student, he came up to ask me a question about an assignment. I noticed that the boy I told him he should consider his friend stood a few feet back waiting on him to finish talking to me. Then they walked across the quad together talking about things that 18-year-old boys talk about. I was so damned proud so see these friends interact, to know that maybe this boy no knows he is doing this college thing right. It was one of the best kinds of teaching moments, and I hope I remember it forever.


It sounds so cheesy, but I don't care: being a teacher is my favorite thing about my life. And I've got a pretty good life full of lots of great things.

Happy weekend, y'all!

Something for the critical intro

And Now



And now as you read these poems
--you whose eyes and hands I love
--you whose mouth and eyes I love
--you whose words and minds I love--
don't think I was trying to state a case
or construct a scenery:
I tried to listen to
the public voice of our time
tried to survey our public space
as best I could
--tried to remember and stay
faithful to details, note
precisely how the air moved
and where the clock's hands stood
and who was in charge of definitions
and who stood by receiving them
when the name of compassion
was changed to the name of guilt
when to feel with a human stranger
was declared obsolete.


1994

--Adrienne Rich, Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995

My Mother's Small Portions

I am frivolous, and I resent the fact that I am. This early afternoon, as I was contemplating ways to make a box of macaroni and cheese stretch as far as it possibly could, I thought of my mother, the meals she used to cook for my brother and me, how filling they were, how completely unfrivolous she has always been. Mama used to stretch a box of dollar store mac and cheese into a full meal on a regular basis when Jeffrey and I were little boys. Boiled elbow noodles and powdered cheese sauce mixed with chopped hot dog or browned and drained ground beef, a can of mixed vegetables. Dinner was served, and god, was it filling. We were never hungry little boys.

Thursday nights we always ate canned chili and store brand hot dogs, red and boiled, on light bread and Fritos. In the winter, lots of beef stew and peanut butter sandwich dinners, pinto beans and corn bread. Skillets of fried Spam and potatoes. I never ate anywhere besides home and my grandmothers' houses, and they ate like we did. I thought everyone did.

I was shocked this weekend spent at a cabin in Pigeon Forge with six of my closest friends when I saw the food they all brought. Ashley and his salmon fillets, peeled and de-veined shrimp. Jeremy and his expensive cheeses, Parmesan not from a green sprinkle can. Virginia's wheel of brie. These things I'd never dream of buying.

Even when I can afford higher-end groceries, I often don't buy them. It's class guilt, I think. Experience has taught me that things like expensive food (or weekend cabin trips for that matter) are frivolous. Money is better spent elsewhere, like on unexpected doctor's visits and prescriptions. Last minute car repairs. And I'm the king of unexpected crises of those varieties. Every damn time I reach for the non-off brand whathaveyou at Kroger, I hear Mama's voice, the voices of my aunts and grandmothers, back and back and back, telling me to think, to plan, to save my pennies here to pay on the dollars I'll have to spend later. And I listen, do as I'm told, and I always seem to have the money for those unexpected things, though I worry that might change with the current state of the economy. But that's a different blog post.

The point is, I can't spend a dime of my hard earned money without toiling over it. I can't have a meal at a restaurant without calculating what sacrifices I'll have to make at home for the rest of the week to make up for exorbitant spending or buy a tank of gas without contemplating canceling my cable service. I know what my means are, and I hate living beyond them. That's the cardinal sin of salt of the earth, lower-middle class people, my people. So, I feel badly for going on a weekend getaway when I should be saving for the unexpected. When I remember how when I was little, Mama was always on a diet, because she was conscious of her weight, but also because she wanted to make sure her husband and two boys had enough to eat. I was raised on my mother's small portions, her practicality. I worry I'll never be as unfrivolous as she is.

Notes from my Mental Health Day

I'm becoming schizophrenic, y'all. I forget who I'm supposed to be from time to time, start using my teacher voice with my peers in the creative workshops I'm taking, find myself laughing at my kids' inappropriate jokes (when I should be schooling them on how to be respectful college students). I was commenting on my classmates' memoir essays* for poetry workshop the other day, and I caught myself marking weak thesis statements, misplaced modifiers, poor paragraph development. That's probably not the best way to be a respectful classmate, is it? Well, teaching basic writing really informs the way I read writing. And the way I write. Don't mess with Tim/Mr. Sisk when it comes to transitions and topic sentences.

Today, I've decided to take a break from all the grading and teachering to focus on getting my thoughts in order. I'm calling it my Mental Health Day, a day in which I will not respond to student emails, I will not do lesson plans, and I will not read a blessed critical essay on poetry or drama for the classes I'm taking. That's why God invented Sundays, right?

I'm going to the Greek Festival with some friends and reading around in Gregory Maguire's Wicked for fun. I'm going to wipe down my kitchen counters and make some chicken cutlets. Then wipe the counters down again. And then I might work on revising some poems, or I might just read some of the poetry collections I've been picking up from book sales and the library that I haven't had time to do much more than skim. I'm expecting all of y'all to hold me accountable.

*Memoir essay: Use an experience from your life to situate yourself in a poem you like, thereby reading it autobiographically and getting inside the poet's head to better understand the lyrical decisions she made. That way you can understand how the rhythms, line length, form, etc., works in that poet's poem and import those strategies into your own poetics. It's a wonderful assignment, probably best for advanced writers (but, you know, it might be a good way to teach beginning writers how to engage with a poem). I chose "Practicing" by Marie Howe and wrote about my first kiss. The exercise was so helpful, I plan to do it with other poems as I work on the critical introduction to my chapbook.

In Absentia

Hot damn. I have a new respect for my teachers, especially the ones whose primary course evaluation method involves grading essays. If my kids ask me one more time when they are getting their papers back, I'm going to explode. This week, young ones. I'll get them to you this week.

Yes, this is why I've been absent. Because I'm a teacher, but I'm also still a student, and I have not yet found the balance among being Tim, Mr. Sisk, and Bookspaz the Blogger. So the ol' blog has taken a backseat to the drama theory I've been reading, the rhetorical analysis I've been teaching. Now, I'm snatching a minute while my clothes tumble and my coffee gets cold to get a bit of blogging done. Here goes.

I've applied, been accepted, and had a phone interview for the Southern Teachers Agency. This means when private and independent schools around the South start looking for English teachers, my very friendly placement counselor, Jay, will match me up with them for interviews with principals, and I might be employed next year. When I asked my thesis advisor to write me a letter of rec for this program, she rolled her eyes a bit. I shouldn't teach high school, she says. Then she proceeded to give me the name of the English Dept. Chair at the community college here in Knoxville. So, I'll apply there too, but I bet I won't have much luck. There's an academic glut in East Tennessee.

What I really want to do is work in a bakery for a year or so. I've always wanted to learn to decorate cakes, and baking is one of my Most Favorite Things To Do. It calms me. Focuses my attention on something so my mind won't scuttle around among the jostling thoughts of papers to grade, books to read, exams to prepare for, boys to stop myself from loving. There's one in Knoxville I adore. I might see if I can weasel my way into a position there this summer. We'll see.

I just don't want to be one of those aimless wanderers with a Master's degree in English. I want a job and and a dog and a two-bedroom apartment. That's why I'm making plans so soon.

In other news, the teaching is going well except for the fact that I'm never as good in my first class as I am in my second. Every MWF I leave the first group (or rather, they leave me since I teach back-to-back in the same classroom) feeling like those kids deserve a better teacher. But I'm what they've got, and I'll keep on trucking along. I'm still getting my land legs, y'all.

I've made up my mind to ride my bike to Panera Bread today and write a little. I haven't had time to write much of anything besides emails and paper comments this week, and I've got some poems I need to get out of my head. You all know the feeling.

I hope everyone is well. I hope you're all registered to vote. I hope you're all voting for Obama (one of my friend's students spelled his name, "O'Bama.") Love.

Wherein Mr. Sisk rants not about teen pregnancy but teen marriage.

So, looks like teenage pregnancy is all the rage again. Solange Knowles back in '03. Then Jamie Lynn Spears. And all those pregnancy pact girls in New England (thank God they weren't from Mississippi). Now, I'm specifically interested in Bristol Palin's pregnancy, because as we all know, her abstinence-only education supporting mother is the newly announced Republican veep candidate. Perhaps Bristol's untimely knocking up will communicate something to her mother about sex education. I doubt enough to change her politics, though.

I'm not trying to be pejorative here. I commend Bristol for keeping her baby. It's going to be tough, but it's going to be worth it. What absolutely blows my mind is the news that Bristol intends to marry the baby's father. At 17. Now, feel free to disagree, but I'm strongly under the persuasion that having a baby at seventeen most likely won't ruin her life, but getting married that young will. That's two adult roles the poor girl will have to take on all at once: mother and wife. Hopefully those hormones will kick in and guide her in the mother role, but I hear it takes people years to learn how to play the spouse(admittedly, it probably takes men longer). And at seventeen, I worry both Bristol and Baby Daddy will be way too self-involved to make a relationship work. Loving a baby you birth and can't send back is one thing; loving the boy who knocked you up Til Death Do You Part is quite another. I'm flabbergasted, really.

It's 2008. No longer is the stigma of being an unwed single mother as severe. Okay, I've never been one, but I've known plenty and it seems to me that there is quite a precedent for successfully raising a child as a single mother. There is not, however, the same precedent for young marriages (hell, marriages in general). Perhaps it's my Gen Y sensibilities showing, or my white trash morality, but I think there are far worse things in this world than having a baby out of wedlock. Much worse. War, poverty, restless legs syndrome. Marrying at seventeen. Sheesh.

I hate to rant so much, but damn, y'all. Does anyone else find this impending marriage as ludicrous as I do?

In other news, Mr. Sisk is back in action with a vengeance. Not only has he successfully conferenced with all his students (all 43 of them!) without canceling class (a nightmare, btw), but he's also stayed on top of his grading and made two unsuspecting eighteen-year-old girls cry. Well, they actually made themselves cry, or thought crying would get them out of having to buy books. But it didn't work, because he knows college freshmen are often very selfish (he was one not so long ago). And that they are too immature to get married.

Wit that, I dash off to read Nietzsche. That's a line I never thought I'd use.

Happy Tuesday, y'all.

Why I love Michelle Obama

Because she is articulate and seems genuine.
Because I buy into the hype.
Because I believe her when she says she believes in change.
Because she's a mother and a mentor and a public servant.
Because this country needs the Obamas in the White House.






Anybody want to volunteer at the Obama campaign with me this Thursday?

On the topic of Friendship

When my momma managed the Family Dollar store at Bullfrog Corner, she became best friends with a hairdresser named Eunice who worked at the Mac's. No. 2 hair shop in the same strip mall, past the Super Valu that used to be a Piggly Wiggly that used to be a Big Star. That was back in the late 90s when I was just starting out in high school and came home crying a lot because I just didn't have any friends. Fourteen, fat, and effeminate were not traits that put one on the fast track to likablity and Horn Lake High School, and I knew it well every afternoon when I had no one to sit with on the school bus. My momma, though, she always knew how to make friends. A real go getter, my mother takes situations by the reigns and guides them in the direction of her favor. I still smile when I think of the story of Momma and Eunice's (now defunct) Friendship. It goes like this.

Eunice used to walk down to the store on her breaks from hairdressing and waste her tip money on polyresin angel figurines. Being the astute Southern woman that she is, Momma noticed Eunice's melon nail polish one day as she rang up her covey at the cash register and told her how much she loved the color. Within the same conversation, Momma found out where Eunice worked, her living situation (poor thing rented a mother-in-law wing from some family on Horn Lake Road) and decided they'd be friends. So, she said it, just like that: "Eunice, you look like somebody I want to be friends with, so let's be friends."

They were good friends for quite a few years, too. Eunice used to come over to the house and bring Momma little boxes of candy and neon colored cigarette lighters, and Momma would drive Eunice to see her mother at the nursing home. For a while there, I even got into the habit of calling Eunice "Aunt Nez," as Inez was her middle name and she had no nieces or nephews to regard her affectionately. She even would cut my hair for free if I went down to the shop after it closed.

Eunice was a recovering alcoholic, though. Momma knew this going into the relationship. Hell, she probably found out that much in the initial cash stand meeting, and that probably made her want to be Eunice's friend even more. I'm a lot like my momma in that we both take on the underdogs, the underachievers, the fucked up friends we hope to fix. Momma did her best to fix Eunice, even took off work for two days, paid for the gas, hotel--everything--and drove her to the hospital in Jackson so she could get on the list for a liver transplant.

I doubt Eunice got the transplant. How could she have ever afforded it? And anyway, Momma put her down a year or so later because the poor hairdresser got depressed and turned back to the bottle. That made my momma so mad that she swore she'd never talk to her again, and I don't think she has except once, a year or so ago. She called Eunice because she had read in the paper that her momma died.

I say all of this because I've been thinking a lot about my friendship style in the past couple of weeks, and I am trying to make sense of my motivations. Taking a cue from my mother, I approached a new MA student named Eric and informed him that he will be my new best friend last week. We have hung out together every day since. I wonder if that was a creepy thing to do--to approach a relative stranger and demand mutual affection beyond the boundaries of acquaintanceship when we really are not more than acquainted at this point. I like to think I'm being proactive in the situation, and I remind myself that I've routinely done this type of thing before, just on a more discrete level. I meet people, decide I want to be friends with them, then proceed in charming them with my dazzling, albeit self-deprecating, wit. That's what I do.

But I hope my motivations are pure. I really do believe they are, but I always worry that I try to orchestrate too much in my life instead of allowing things to develop organically. I like to be in control of what happens to me, y'all, because I feel like if I don't take my life by the reigns, surely someone else will. I'm a chronic rehearser, I come from a family of planners, and, like my momma and daddy before me, I weigh all the options before making decisions. It's my legacy.

Maybe this friendship style is, too.

Absorbing the Cost

For years now I've been plagued by expensive repairs just before school starts. For any of you college students out there, you know that the beginning of the semester is also The Most Expensive Time Of The Year, which is always painfully true for me. And compounded by a plethora of other, unpredicted expenses, causes me to stress and average about 20 "WTF?!"s a minute. Allow me to elaborate.

When I was about to move to UCA for college way back in 2003, somehow the windshield of my car burst into a trillion pieces while sitting in my grandmother's driveway one hot Mississippi August day. Of course I only had liability insurance, which did not cover glass breakage, so I had to pay out of pocket in order to fix the car. $300 I'll never get back.

Then last year, when I was about to leave Good Ol' Conway for Even Better Knoxville, my car broke down near Hot Springs, from where I had to be towed, a new timing belt and starter had to be installed, and a whole slough of other repairs I can't quite remember except that they totaled near $800. That I'll never get back.

This year it wasn't the car that did me in (though I did have the muffler replaced a month ago), but my computer, or more specifically, my HP Pavillion Notebook whose warranty expired mere weeks before the hard drive decided to go bust. The hard drive with my syllabus and pictures and entire academic record of my first year of grad school. The computer store (a local place, thank you very much) was unable to save anything from the old hard drive, but fortunately I'd backed up most of the academic work, poems, and syllabus in Google docs. But no more pictures or Miley Cyrus songs. Good bye, summertime memories. Have fun exploring the infinite abyss with the $260 that I'll never get back.

At least in these trying times I've had the money (or good credit standing) to afford the fixes. At least I have things sorted out now, since school starts tomorrow, and ohmigod I'll be Mr. Sisk every day for the rest of my life. I've got my bearings now, and my syllabus is done, too. Those are two very important things to have your hands on.

Good luck this semester, y'all. Of course I'll keep you updated on the teaching life.

Snippets (with a nod to C.D. Wright)

In another universe, I might would be the ankle-sprained member of a women's Olympic gymnastics team. The spirited stunter with a heart of gold, enthusiasm to spare, who would see her team to victory had she not torn her ACL dancing the Cupid Shuffle in the locker room shower. Out of the way already, toots. So close, but still no gold.

When I was seventeen, all I wanted to be was Winona Ryder's character in Mermaids. Charlotte, the confused, slightly macabre, too-smart-for-her-own-good teenager whose life is drastically changed for the better after she loses her virginity to the handyman in the belfry of the convent next door. I wanted to scream out the window of a stolen car, "I want to live a violently exciting life!"

A violently exciting life is not something one can plan. I'm young and naive and a pretty bad poet, but I've learned at least that much from living the life of a Compulsive Rehearser.

Sometimes, when I'm rehearsing aloud to myself, I answer back in different voices. You think I'm not as crazy when I do that.

You think I'm more crazy when I admit that I've lied extensively about the number of people I've slept with. Or perhaps you'll think lying about sex is the curse of youth. Either way, I'm a liar and you still like me.

If this were Mississippi and over there was the Mississippi River, the humidity would uppercut us, leave us gasping. Instead it's a beautiful day in East Tennessee, cloudy, 65 degrees. A change could make me cry.

I'm not the weepy type, but were I, I'd cry in front of you. Only so you'd pet me. Instead I write and bebop and lie in catatonic states. I'm pretty busy.


*I've been trying to mimic C. D. Wright's poem, but all I can get down is tone, not style. Yesterday a friend told me I should write prose more, and though I've never envisioned myself as a prose writer, I gave it a shot with my "Snippets." Maybe, if I can muster the craftsmanship, I can go back in and make my paragraphs ghazals. Then Galway Kinnell would love me.

Even artichokes have hearts

In an attempt to outrun the emotional onslaught of too many goodbyes too soon, I came back to Mississippi on Tuesday under the pretenses of celebrating a friend's birthday then attending a wedding this weekend. Well, I guess those aren't total pretenses, because they are true. I celebrated a friend's birthday on Tuesday night, and I'm attending a wedding tomorrow. But I sure as hell haven't outrun the heartache.

With so much going for me, so much in the works for my future, I should be plumb ashamed that I pine over the dissolution of my favorite Grad School Group, that I can't help but feel like things Will Never Be The Same. I know things won't be the same, but they'll get better. They always get better, and I always find myself somehow the happiest I've ever been. It's really the best place to find oneself.

But still, for now, I'm sulky that my friends are gone, and I'm doing something about it: calling and texting too much, spending too much time out on the town with other friends, not returning emails. These are my coping mechanisms, y'all. What are yours?

In other news, my poem "When Boys Discovered Flowers Would Get Them Into Girls' Pants" has been selected for publication in the upcoming anthology, Splinter Generation. Check it out, and many thanks to Steph for sending me along the call for submissions.

Charlotte told me C.D. Wright is kind of a bitch

But I love this poem, the idea behind it, that it's driven by personal disclosures. I'm going to write the Tim version of this poem, and I'm going to disclose odd things, true things, entirely too many things. Just to see what happens. Watch out, y'all.

Personals
C.D. Wright

Some nights I sleep with my dress on. My teeth

are small and even. I don't get headaches.

Since 1971 or before, I have hunted a bench

where I could eat my pimento cheese in peace.

If this were Tennessee and across that river, Arkansas,

I'd meet you in West Memphis tonight. We could

have a big time. Danger, shoulder soft.

Do not lie or lean on me. I'm still trying to find a job

for which a simple machine isn't better suited.

I've seen people die of money. Look at Admiral Benbow. I wish

like certain fishes, we came equipped with light organs.

Which reminds me of a little known fact:

if we were going the speed of light, this dome

would be shrinking while we were gaining weight.

Isn't the road crooked and steep.

In this humidity, I make repairs by night. I'm not one

among millions who saw Monroe's face

in the moon. I go blank looking at that face.

If I could afford it I'd live in hotels. I won awards

in spelling and the Australian crawl. Long long ago.

Grandmother married a man named Ivan. The men called him

Eve. Stranger, to tell the truth, in dog years I am up there.

Cooking to Assuage

It's a Tuesday night, and I'm sitting at home, y'all. Normally, I'd be out at Barley's for pint night with the boys spending two dollars after two dollars on Sweetwater 420. But the boys, at least two of them, are packing up tonight for big moves on Wednesday and Thursday. Being the ESFJ I am, I've volunteered to wield boxes and furniture in exchange for very little, probably a few beers, on both days. But really that's fine with me. I'm a natural born helper. I get my kicks from feeling like I've done something useful and nice for another. If you don't believe me, check out my personality type.

Anyway, with all this free time I've been cooking up a storm. See, I cook to assuage. I cook when I'm bored or when I've got the blues, and particularly when I feel homesick or lovestruck. I cook as a means of replacing an overwhelming emotion with something productive, creative, and time consuming. I guess I should be writing poems, and I do that too, but cooking has more tangible results. The proof is in the pudding, and there isn't so much delayed gratification. I need commendation now, thank you.

Earlier today I made some veggie quesadillas with things I had on hand: flour tortillas, yellow squash, eggplant, portabellas, cilantro, and cheddar cheese. I wouldn't know how to begin to recount the recipe since I just chopped and sliced and grated and satueed and toasted until I had something that tasted good. But here's about what I used:

• 1 yellow squash
• 1 baby eggplant (both local!)
• 1 portabella cap
• 1/4 white onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• about 1/4 cup fresh cilantro
• a couple pats of local unsalted butter
• salt, pepper, crushed red pepper to taste
• a squeeze of fresh lemon juice around the pan

Man, did it smell good as it sauteed. Looked pretty too. I piled the filling in between two tortillas and topped with grated cheddar, then toasted the whole thing in the toaster oven, sliced with a pizza cutter, and topped with my delicious homemade salsa.


It was quite yummy, and I think the filling would also be good over pasta or maybe in lasagna.

Ashley came over tonight right in the middle of Jeopardy! because I had a bunch of boxes for him. A pack rat from way back, I kept all the boxes I moved to Knoxville with in a storage room adjacent to my apartment. It was a stroll down memory lane to see all my TCBY and Subway product boxes go away in his Camry, like a piece of my past life as a fast food employee to be forever lost in some storage shed in McMinnville, TN. Oh well, they're just boxes. Plus, in return Ashley gave me all his baking stuff: mixes, sugars, bottles of vanilla extract, more cocoa than I'll ever use, rolled oats, chocolate. I used my bounty to make some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that I plan on bringing to the Great Moving Event tomorrow. A true Southerner never shows up at an event with out a dish, and I'm hell with the cookies. Once I was unable to successfully complete a batch without burning the bottoms, but I'm learning, y'all. Mr. Sisk has a mean oven eye now.

My cookies turned out just scrumptious, though if I had them to make again, I'd have cut back on the sugars. They are a bit sweet, and that's saying something, because I've got a killer sweet tooth.


I plan to bust them out when we need an energy boost tomorrow. Hope Ben and Ashley like them.

Welp, that's what I've done with my Tuesday. Now I'm going to run and catch Law and Order: SVU. Elliot Stabler is a dream.

P.S.-- I had picture of my food, and I tried 4 times to resize and post them, but the skill escapes me. I'll work on it later, but now SVU!

What I Was Going To Write

I was going to write about how I've been depressed the last couple of days, as this has been The Weekend of Goodbyes.

I was going to tell you all how quickly people come and go in graduate school. How some of my closest friends in Knoxville all decided to play the cruel trick of making me love them and then leaving, all of them in the same week.

I was going to tell you how much I will miss Ashley, his random text messages about country songs and Miley Cyrus. His super cool dog, Mercutio.

And Becca, the nicest person I've ever met, my favorite party hopping mate, my friend.

And Emily, the nicest Ohioan, the gentlest soul I've found.

But I was walking today on the nature trail, and a little blond boy on training wheels looked up at me, smiled and said, "It's a beautiful day today."

It is. My summer's been full of beautiful days because of my beautiful friends, and I wish them the best of luck.

Only three weeks of summer left, then I go into Mr. Sisk mode for nine full months. I'm scared and excited.



To all my buddies moving on to bigger and better things, good luck. I will think of you often.
To all my students (all 46 of them!) entering my classroom door in August, welcome to college, y'all!

I Want to Ride My Bicycle...

I've been doing some thinking, y'all, and I've decided what I really need is a bicycle. A zippy one with a bell and hand brakes and a detachable front tire and an alloy rear rack. I want one that is good for street cruising but that can also take the rugged hills of Knoxville. I don't want a mountain bike, since I won't be mountain biking. I just want t road bike that I can ride to school since I live close enough to do so and forgo purchasing a $162 parking permit that only lasts 9 months.

My dream bike would look similar to this one:

I can get that beauty there for $124.00 on line, but I'm leery of buying a bicycle on line. Dear God, how much would the shipping be? And are they expecting me to put it together after its shipped in a million little pieces? I can barely put my Crock-Pot together, and it only has two!

I checked out Craigslist and found an awesome sounding bike for $75, which is perfectly within my price range. But when I emailed the seller for a picture, some country gal named Debbie down in Seymour, TN, she told me that she did not see the sense in developing an entire roll of film for one picture to scan and send to me. Hmph. I told Deb that I don't buy goods without first seeing them, and therefore she could keep her damned bicycle and shove it up her...well, I didn't go that far.

So I'm bikeless still.

I also checked out the Goodwill down the road from my apartment and found a whole slew of bikes for $15 a pop. However, none looked like they were in working order, and I'm not looking for a fixer upper. I want one I can hop on and ride right out of the store and into the sunset. Or at least until I get too hot and need to stop under a shade tree for a spell.

So it looks like a bike shop or the Walmart is my best option. The thing is, I checked out the bike shop near my house, and most of their merchandise cost as much as my car. My name is not Lance Armstrong; I don't need a $2,500 racing bike. And as far as Walmart goes, well, I just hate going there. Not because I'm a liberal pseudo-intellectual who finds the corporation repulsive; I'm actually not anti-Walmart (which doesn't mean I'm pro-Walmart, either), but don't tell my grad school counterparts that lest an argument at the pizza buffet ensue (we'll save that story for another time). It's just Walmart makes me mad, with all the long lines and rude salespeople and items housed in the most poorly thought out places--like sandwich bags not beside the trash bags. That store makes my blood pressure go up, so I try to avoid it for the sake of my mental and physical health.

But I might need to take a whiskey shot or bong hit or meditation session and just go in, get a bike, and get out. It can be like a reconaissance mission. Hell, maybe I should even take a rifle with me. Just kidding, y'all. Still, I shudder to think about braving the wilds of the falling prices, though.

I also can't stomach spending over $100 on any single item at once. I get nauseous just thinking about it, which is completely irrational. I regularly spend that much in a day or so on groceries, gas, and dinner and a movie with friends. But I feel like I'm getting more for my money then for some reason. I should really get past this over-$100 fear if I'm ever going to be a successful adult or parent or benefactor of the Barak Obama campaign.

I'll keep on toiling over the bicycle situation until I either just break down and get one or cough up the money for the parking pass. Either way, I'm sure all the worry warting will cause my hairline to recede even more. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for a cheap bike for Mr. Sisk

Note on the Fridge for Barbara Kingsolver

Dear Barbara,

I curse you and thank you for many things as I read your latest book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Firstly, you've made me feel sufficiently guilty for all the foods I have consumed in my life. To my credit, I never considered that when I buy produce from California, it's drenched in fossil fuels from transcontinental transportation. I also didn't realize the health and economic monstrosities of high fructose corn syrup. Now I do, and I feel badly for drinking a Coke today.

But I'm trying, Barb. No more fast food for this young man, and I'm doing my best to kick the soda pop habit. Really, the one I had today was the first I'd had in a week. From here on out, I swear off CAFO produced meat, and I'm cutting back on meat altogether. I'd already quit the red meat, but my dearly beloved poultry is taking a dietary hit, too. I'm shopping at the farmer's market, despite how scanty it can be, and I've been making my own pantry staples from local ingredients: pasta sauce, salsa. I'm even going to try my hand at bread making. Because I care about my local community, and I want to do more to decrease my carbon footprint. I don't think recycling is enough anymore.

Thanks for showing me that I don't have to be a vegan to eat responsibly, because I really don't get the health, economic, or moral benefits of such a dietary choice, and I don't think you do either. And thanks for showing me that just making small changes in the way I eat will help me make the world a better place. But please don't hate me if I still shop at Kroger occasionally. I'm a poor graduate student.

Sincerely,
Tim

The Cars of My Life: From Rattle Trap to Hatchback

Thanks, Donna, for posting about the cars of your life. It inspired me to do the same, as I was only just thinking fondly about my old cars the other day.

When I was a little boy my favorite toys were Matchbox cars. I liked Matchbox better than Hot Wheels because the latter were just too unrealistic. Cars that looked like lizzards, school buses painted blindingly silver, rocket ship cars, no thanks; I've always preferred verisimilitude. I used to fantasize about the type of car I'd get when I was a teenager. I remember being in love with VW Beetles, and right around the time I was getting ready to get behind the wheel, the New Beetle was introduced. I wanted a green one so badly, I could taste it. I remember telling my aunt when I was around 14 how I wanted my first car to be a New Beetle. She just scoffed. "You'll get a rattle trap piece of shit, just like we all did," she said. Boy was she right. I started driving in October 2000 when I was 15. My first car was a 1989 Toyota Tercel.

My Tercel looked exactly like the one in the above picture: 2-door sedan, mud flaps, maroon. It had a carburetor instead of fuel injection, and the damned thing took forever to warm up. I was the first of my friends to have a car, and I was on top of the world in this little Dr. Pepper can. I loved driving around listening to low-quality home recordings of my angry girl music c.d.'s on the Tercel's tape deck and pumping my own gas. Momma bought it from a used car lot in Nesbit and it had an amazing new car smell, mixed with the satisfying stench of motor oil. Daddy made me keep a half a quart of Penzoil in the trunk because the Tercel "only burned a little oil."
Sadly, my love affair with the maroon Tercel was short-lived. After being a licensed driver for a mere two weeks, I totaled the car on my way to school one foggy morning. I couldn't see a thing, swerved into the left lane, and hit a mini bus for Phoenix Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church head on. To make matters worse, I was dressed as a Spartan cheerleader for costume day during Homecoming week at school. Luckily, the only thing that got hurt were my feelings, and I went on to school late that day after the car was towed and my mom and step dad lectured me endlessly about being a responsible driver.


My next car was a 1986 Toyota Camry. Unlike the zippy red one above, mine was the color of dirt and it went dead in the rain. Daddy found the car for $2,500 at a used car lot in Memphis, and upon discovering its low mileage and that it had only had one owner, he lovingly scooped it up for me. I hated that car at first. I remember when I got it. It was the first of November my 10th grade year, and Momma made me ride with her down to Daddy's house, but she didn't tell me why. When we got there, he was standing beside the ugliest car I had ever seen. Boxy. Dirty. Old womanish. My heart sank, because I knew this was to be my new car.
My response to the car was not as joyous as he had hoped for, especially since my father had spent his afternoon washing, waxing, and scrubbing its tires. At times, I could be a bratty teenager.

I learned to love that Camry, though, and I still think about it fondly. I loved the way its gear selector fit the palm of my hand, and I haven't had a car since that has fit as well. The damn thing had a leaky distributor cap and it would go dead every time a hard rain came. Even when I was driving down the road. More than once I was certain I would be killed when my car stalled out in the fast lane with a redneck in a pickup truck zooming up behind me. Luckily, the only incidents I had in that car were minor. Once, it went dead on me on I-240 way out in East Memphis because the timing belt broke. Once I had to have the muffler replaced. Jeffrey backed into the driver's side door early one Christmas morning on his way to the deer woods. But it was only a minor dent and the door still opened. I drove that car until almost the end of high school, when after working and saving for 3 years I bought this beauty out of a man's front yard for $4,500:

This beauty is a 1996 Geo Prizm LSi. Mine looked just like that one, those same hub caps, that same beautiful baby blue. It was the car of my dreams when I was 17. That Prizm had everything: power locks and windows, a factory c.d. player, cruise control. I had the nicest car of all my friends until Candi's daddy bought her a brand new Pontiac Grand Am, but I always rectified the situation in my head by saying at least I bought my own car. I burned up the roads in this baby. It took me to New Orleans and back twice. I got my first speeding ticket in that car. And my second. And my third. All within the same month. It got me through my first two years of college, making the 180-mile trek across I-40 from Horn Lake, MS to Conway, AR many, many times. Only mishap I ever had in it (besides the speeding tickets) happened the weekend before I was to move away to college. I was 18 and always in a hurry. One night, I was leaving the tennis courts at the park by my old high school and backed right into a lamp post. It knocked a big dent in my bumper and broke out a tail light. Daddy got the light fixed, but he made be pay for it.

Dent and all, I loved that car and was really sad to let it go. But Muffy made me a deal that I couldn't pass up. She told me she'd sign one of her cars over to me if I let her sell mine to my aunt. Muffy's car was older but in better shape with less miles and no body damage. So I switched, but I still hate to see my aunt in my old car when I'm back home. She doesn't keep in clean or love it the way I did.

Which brings me to my current car, a 1992 Honda Civic hatchback. Mine's white, and that's the single thing I don't like about it. I can't keep the tree sap off of it, I can't keep the fenders clean. But I do love the zippy little car. I have been driving in since 2005, and it has been an invaluable asset in moving me from all the apartments and dorm rooms where I've lived. Seriously, y'all: fold down the backseats and you can fit a small island nation in the back of my car. My Civic is sixteen years old and only just now has 100,000 miles on it. It gets great gas mileage and has low emissions. That car has pedaled me all over I-40, West to East, from Conway to Knoxville and back again. I recently had to put a new muffler on it, but the folks at the shop gave me a deal because I told them I teach at UT. People really do bleed orange up here, and now so does my car with its Volunteers vanity plate, courtesy of my father. I plan to drive this baby until it absolutely falls apart, which might be a while because I hear Hondas last forever. Which is good, seeing as how personal cars are an endangered species, or so I hear.

My Mother's Handwriting

I was a writer long before I knew how to string words together to form meaningful phrases. Even before I could tell a good story, I could write with the prettiest penmanship any four-year-old trailer trash boy has and will ever have. I thank my momma for that. Of all the things she's taught me, most important are always to say yes ma'am and no sir and that pretty handwriting is testament to a pretty soul. My momma has the prettiest soul. It blooms in the curlicues of her S's, the precision of her cursive T's.

When I was a little boy about to embark on kindergarten, my momma sat me down at the dining table and taught me cursive handwriting. On tablets of lined paper, she would write words in luscious script--dog, car, Timothy--skipping a line between each so that I could mimic her cursive underneath. This was our after supper ritual for weeks before school started, a sort of call and response akin to Catholic prayers. My mother bidding me beauty, and me reciprocating. I learned cursive writing before I was adept at writing in print.

Once I started school, my kindergarten teacher, bless her heart, didn't know what to do with the too nice, too sensitive little boy in her class who always wrote in cursive. I remember being constantly told that I'd learn that kind of handwriting in third grade, that in kindergarten I must print. But I liked the curlicues, the connectedness of cursive letters. I liked how it bound me up in my mother.

Things came to a head when my teacher, having had enough of my haut couture penmanship, escorted me into the hallway for a private scolding. I cried uncontrollably for the rest of the day, because until that point I'd never been scolded at school. My momma told me from day one of my academic career that if I ever, ever got in trouble at school, things would be even worse for me when I got home. She assured me she'd know if I had gotten in trouble so there was no point in keeping my transgression secret from her. A precocious but overly-dramatic child, I was certain my mother would kill me for writing in cursive.

But she didn't. Instead she made cursive handwriting special , by creating writing time with me each night at home. I was to print at school, but at nighttime, after my bath and before sleep, I'd lay across her bed in an over-sized t-shirt with a pen and pad and we'd write. Not stories or poems, mind you, but words. Cursive words, usually names, family members', pets'. That's how I know all of my aunts', uncles', and cousins' full names, from writing them out with my momma each night.

Years of schooling have deteriorating my beautiful hand. Exquisite penmanship is an art form that takes patience and leisure that in-class notetaking doesn't afford. When I leave notes for my momma back home--short things telling her where I've gone, when I'll be back, what I'd like for her to pick up at the store--she scowls at the disrepair my handwriting has fallen into. I've taken her gift and thrown it by the wayside, she thinks, my mother whose handwriting still flourishes and flicks across the page.

Do the Whirlwind

I've been quite the man about town this week, y'all. I got a little dab of culture on Wednesday when, walking to the farmer's market in Market Square, I saw a sign for free admission at the Knoxville Museum of Art. I decided I'd make a detour on my way back from the market, and with a canvas bag full of white cucumbers, fresh peppers, and a $5 loaf of bakery fresh whole grain bread in tow, that's precisely what I did.

The museum has four galleries, so it's on the small side, but one of them is dedicated entirely to East Tennessee art, and I enjoyed that. Local art really helps me get the home-feel of a place, and Knoxville is feeling more and more like home for me. The collection ranged from folk art (which I proudly admit to admiring) to more traditional oil-on-canvas type stuff. I'm sure there's a more precise term for what I mean, but I don't know too much about art, and I'm moderately ashamed.

But only moderately.

There was also photography exhibit called A New Tribe which featured photos of local women of color and their bios underneath. Interesting photos, and I even knew one of the women featured, but the best part of the entire exhibit was Ms. Nancy Taylor Hawes' bio indicating her position as Deaconess at Zion A.M.E. Chapel and Licensed Exhorter. I thought I'd found my new calling until I did some research and realized these licentiates don't drive demons from the damned and suffering. Guess I'll stick with being an English teacher.

Since yesterday, I've been hosting an old college friend whose coming to UT for his Master's in English in the fall and an old high school friend who wanted an excuse to get out of Mississippi for the weekend in my cozy, one-bedroom apartment. Having house guests usually stresses me out, but these two are phenomenally easy to deal with, the types who don't constantly need to be entertained because they like to venture out into the city on their own. So that's what they are doing while I'm at work in the Writing Center for Athletes And Athletes Only (and they will kick you out if you are not one, dammit. Ludicrous). It's a pretty sweet job, though. I get paid to be available if a football player needs help with a paper. But they never seem to need help, so I blog. Or read. Or daydream about being a homeowner.

It's been a whirlwind week, and next week's only going to get twistier. But I'll just dance right on through with my best shoes on. You should join me.



P.S.-- Crazy Texas Mommy, when are you going to tell me about your jaunt in East Tennessee? And pix of you in the Dolly clothes ASAP!

When Life Gives You Lemons, Put Them In Your Sweet Tea and Thank God You're From the South

I've been MIA for nearly a week because I made a little jaunt back to the homestead to celebrate the fourth with my family and old chum from my pre-college years, Christy. One week, over 800 miles, nearly $150 in gas, a whole slough of new teacher clothes, two fireworks shows, and a cooler full of homegrown food later, I'm back in Knoxville, preparing meals for the week and doing what I can to tucker myself out so I'll sleep well tonight. I have to wake up at early thirty tomorrow to be on campus by 8 o'clock and work in the Writing Center. Oh, the Writing Center. And I thought I was through with it. But hey, it's easy money for four weeks' worth of work.

Whenever I go home, I come back with a carload of crap, most of it really good stuff. Between Momma and Muffy, I can't make it across the state line without a boxful of kitschy junk from Goodwill and fresh food from the farm. I hit the motherlode this trip, acquiring so much food from Muffy that dear sweet Daddy had to sacrifice his new blue ice chest so I could get my goodies home without them spoiling. Here's the list:

8 homegrown tomatoes
2 gallons of freshly picked-and-snapped green beans. (I did the picking, Muffy did the snapping)
2 grilled chicken breasts (leftover from the fourth of July barbecue)
1 head of lettuce
1 dozen fresh eggs from Muffy's sitting hens
2 cucumbers straight out of the garden
1 quart jar of home canned tomatoes
1 pint jar of home canned fig preserves
1 pint jar of home canned orange marmalade
1 quart jar of what Muffy says is peach preserves but its clearly labeled orange marmalade
1 loaf of bread
1/2 bag of plain potato chips (left over from the fourth of July barbecue)
1 cabbage

Then

Momma gave me a 2 quart pitcher that holds just the right amount of iced tea for me, two large baskets I've used in my linen closet for organized toiletry storage, and a delightfully trashy recipe for Mountain Dew cake that I'll probably make only because mother dear ranted so much about it (recipe to follow).

And

Daddy not only gave me his new blue ice chest, but he also put a University of Tennessee vanity plate on the front of my little Civic, replacing the old, dented UCA one, and he filled my tank up with gas.

Plus

I hit the outlet mall in Tunica and got a nice pair of slacks, a green striped v-neck t-shirt, two oxford shirts (in pale pink and pale blue), a black sweater, a sea green zip up sweatshirt, and two pairs of argyle socks for only $41.37. My Muffy raised a bargian shopper indeed.

Today I've been cooking up a storm, preparing green beans and potatoes, cabbage soup (sounds nasty but tastes divine), corn bread, a baked chicken thigh, and seared mahi mahi (it was on sale at Kroger). I love cooking more than just about anything, except maybe eating and scribbling. Oh, and reading. And that's all I've done today, which is why I love my life. And I love my family, the good country people who make sure this Southern boy has plenty to eat, wear, and sit around his house to collect dust every few months when he rolls into town.

Now, some pictures from the trip!

I am the queen of this double-wide trailer


My seven-year-old cousin, Lily, modeling the fish goggles I gave her.


Action shot of my brother, Jeffrey, playing with Lily


Me, complete with battered nose, and Muffy. And Rosie the chihuahua.


Sunset on the Mississippi River, July 4th


Christy and me at the fireworks show. Note the green striped v-neck t-shirt and battered nose.


Fireworks over the River

Finally, Momma's Slap Your Momma Mountain Dew Cake

• 1 lemon cake mix
• 1 pkg. lemon pudding mix
• 1 (12 oz.) can Mountain Dew
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 4 eggs

Beat all ingredients until smooth. Pour in a greased bundt pan. Bake 25-30 minutes, until done.

Momma knows I've been on a healthy eating kick recently and she told me in all earnestness that I could make a healthy version of this cake with sugar-free pudding mix and diet Mountain Dew. Bless her heart.

On Magazine Subscriptions and Being a Grown Up

I just sent out $70 worth of checks to pay for magazine subscriptions. GQ, Vanity Fair, and Details, come hither. Whenever I subscribe to one, I get special deals in the mail to subscribe to others at half the cover price with promises of special free prizes because I'm such a valued customer. Case in point: Details is sending me a free messenger bag with my paid subscription. Now, I need another bag like I need a whop upside the head. But it's free, and I wanted the magazine subscription anyway. My momma didn't raise no fool.

When I was a tubby little thing growing up in the double wide back in Mississippi, I always promised myself that when I was a grown up, I'd subscribe to magazines. There's just something so adult about having a magazine subscription (or three, in my case). It communicates that you are cultured, aware, understand what's going on in the world. That you keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. Now, I know my subscriptions don't communicate that I'm the most politically and globally informed citizen, but dammit, I know what width ties are in season for the fall. And canvas slip ons are making a come back, y'all. I get gourmet recipes I'll never try, the latest celebrity gossip, and weird stories about sting rays that jump in fishing boats and puncture men's hearts in one fell swoop. It's glorious.

When I was a little boy, I wanted magazine subscriptions and wheat bread. My momma wouldn't get me either. But, boy howdy, you can bet now that I'm grown, I've got them in spades.

What were some promises your child self made to your adult self?

Young Marriages Don't Make Adults: On Friendship, Distance, and Hometown Blues

Robin called me upset the other night. Like normal, I was out having some beers with the grad school crew, and like normal she was jealous. "I am afraid of my future, because I'm afraid of my present, " she said. What a precarious situation to be in, I thought. I told her that I'm so damned excited about my future because each moment of my present only gets better, and she told me I need to grow up and move back home. "I need you to live closer to me," she said.

I told Robin what I should have been telling myself for a couple years now. I'm not prepared to go back to our small Mississippi town because I don't know how to be an adult there. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm new at it, but I'm doing alright with this whole adulthood thing: I pay all my own bills on time, I have my own health insurance, and I know how to penny pinch. What I meant when I said that is this: I have never lived as an adult in my hometown. I packed off to college when I was eighteen, and spent my summers in transit between Mississippi and Arkansas, then eventually exclusively in Arkansas. Now I'm in Tennessee, an adult living my life in a way I don't think I could back home.

I have so much freedom living away. I don't feel compelled to come in at any certain time or restrict what I say (or what I write) certain ways. I'm not looking to get married and I don't care to father a child any time soon. I don't have to constantly look over my shoulder to see who is going to report back to my grandmother who they saw me out with and where. This seems to be the life that I would have to lead if I answered Robin's call and headed back.

Robin is a different kind of adult than me. She got sucked into the perils of small town life, and I regret that for her, because she was too smart to let it happen. But I imagine she had a harder time being a girl with parents who didn't really support her going too far away to college, who pressured her to get married when she was 22, who never seem to be satisfied with what she does with her life unless she mimics their lives. Robin has been my best friend since we were in 10th grade, and I remember she had big dreams. She wanted to work for the FBI, wanted to investigate alien abductions like on the X-Files. She went off to Ole Miss and got her bachelor's in Forensic Chemistry, even went on for a year of graduate work, only to get scared, drop out, and move back to Horn Lake and in with her husband's parents. To top it all off, she got a job next year teaching at our old high school. None of this is what she ever wanted to do.

But she did it, and now she's unsure. I try to tell her that she'll be fine, that's she's doing great, that everything happens for a reason. I want to be there for my friend, at least emotionally, but I don't know how to help her out of the hometown rut, because in many ways, I never experienced it. She has her life planned out for her: high school teacher, wife, SUV driver, soccer mom in the same town where her parents did the same things. It's different for me. I don't know where I'll end up, because I'm not giving up my dream of the writer's life. After taking a year or so off after this MA degree, chances are I'll end up in a Ph.D. program somewhere, then enter the job market and take employment where I can find it. Used to, the thought of spinning out of my hometown's orbit scared me to death, but I'm dealing with the encroaching reality of distance much better now. It's thrilling to think I might wind up half way across the country.

As for Robin, well, bless her little heart. I'm not prepared to be her neighbor again in the foreseeable future, but I know I'll keep on answering the phone when she calls for me to put her back together then school me about being an adult.

On Cleaning Up and Coming Out

My Old College Room Mate is coming to Knoxville for a visit this week, and I'm terribly excited to see him.  When the house sitting gig is up, I have to spend a day scrubbing my kitchen and bathroom, vacuuming and dusting, and strategically arranging my tacky Goodwill nicknacks so OCRM won't give me grief.  I love him, but he's one of those bitchy types, the kind who stares you down before you leave the house and says, "are you really going to wear that?"  

He is so much like Ouisa Boudreaux, crotchety, abrasive, but has a heart of gold.  I'm terribly excited to see him, because he can keep me in stitches and have an intelligent conversation with anyone, but particularly the literature crew, because the boy reads.  He thinks.  He knows his stuff.

Old College Room Mate called me the other night, late.  He'd been drinking, and so had I, and he confessed what I already knew:  he's gay.  Or at least he's trying to figure out if he is.  I'm proud of him for taking that step.  Back when I was with him every day, OCRM was a bit standoffish, afraid to let people know him too much.  He always denied any speculative rumors of his sexuality, and he had the conveniently located Colorado "girlfriend" who never was around.  So, for him to explore his sexuality and practice assuming a gay identity is major.  For him to invite me along on this process is flattering.  

Identity issues are tough.  Sometimes I feel like I know that more than anyone.  I find myself wanting to give OCRM tips on how to successfully navigate himself through the closet door, but I realize that the process is different for everyone.  OCRM came to terms with his sexuality by first entering into sexual relationships with other men and denying the gay label associated with those activities.  'Gay' is a tough label to willingly accept, because it casts its bearers in the role of Other forever.  It makes them suspect, opens them up to countless, "bless his little heart" epithets.  I readily understand why OCRM has been so reluctant to put on the Homo Hat.

Coming out was different for me, probably because I was so young.  When I was fifteen I told my high school friends one-by-one, and much to my surprise all were completely fine with it.  After that I worked on finding something within the cauldron of stereotypes associated with 'Gay' that I could latch on to and learn to perform my identity.  I wrote poems.  I colored my hair.  I auditioned for the school play.  I did everything I could to learn how to live as a gay man, as someone who accepts the label and the marginal status in stride.  Any type of sexual contact with another man would come much later, because I was too scared of men--too scared, or at least unsure, of the man I would become.  Like sex for any teenager, I didn't know what to do (literally, in my case) or how to do it.  Unlike other high school kids, I wasn't willing to fool around until I figured it out.  Experimentation would come later, when I was in college and more used to living as openly gay.

At sixteen, I came out to my parents, shortly after the 9/11 attacks when I thought the world was going to end and I couldn't face Jesus without having confessed my dark secret to Momma and Daddy.  Coming out under fire, I was greeted with mixed-and-unexpected responses from my parents.  Daddy, the stoic, emotionally frigid, ex-Marine, law enforcement officer said "Well, that's okay."  To this day we've never talked about my sexuality again.  Momma, on the other hand, cried in bed for two days and told me how disappointed she was in me.  Isn't it funny how the meanest things someone ever says to you come from those who you are closest to?  I'll never forget when my momma told me she'd sooner me be dead than gay.  I was devastated, because I'd been raised to believe my mother would always love me.  And she did, and she does.  I don't fault her for what she said, because I know she didn't mean it.  Like me, my mother was learning to play a new role, one she'd never pictured herself in before:  the accepting mother of a gay son.  After her two-day crying jaunt, she got out of bed, went back to work, and to this day is my biggest fan.  Sometimes people have to do the wrong thing in order to know how to do the right one.

I want to share all this with OCRM, to let him know that coming out, especially initially, is an emotionally over-wrought process.  He will feel more loved than he has before, and he will get hurt.  He'll feel regret, that perhaps he'll change and not be gay after he's told his friends and family, and then what?  He'll develop a heightened sense of awareness about other people's intentions and attitudes, because a part of him always will be on guard.  A part always has to be.  

Ultimately I want him to know that despite the challenges, the fact that he'll be coming out all his life to every new person he meets, it's something he needs to do in order to feel better about himself.  Disclosure, honesty, self-acceptance:  these are keys to successful maturation, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.  I want him to know that loving himself is key in situations like these, followed closely by surrounding himself with people who love and support him.  There are a lot of negative people with ill-intentions towards difference, but those are not the people to dwell on, because by fearing them we give them what the want.  I want him to know that he is lovely and he will always be loved because he deserves nothing less.  

But before all that, I want him to know that I am not a bad housekeeper and I do have some semblance of taste, so it's off to cleaning, scrubbing, and installing the curtain rods I've been meaning to get around to for 8 months.

I Am Poem

I am a broken screen door,

what creaks at night and frightens.

Wood slats on an old house.

I swing out big like promises, big like hope.

I am a noise maker.

I am slapping the walls, knocking around inside your brain

dry rot taste in your mouth.

I am memory, the past, an old soul with a fresh coat of mustard paint

chipped at the hinges.

I am used, useful, fixable, functional.

Eyes see through me.

Breeze blows through me.

I am weak and courageous.

Flimsy and firm.

I am your defense against the storm.

Thanks to Steph for posting this prompt.  It's my new favorite writer's block defeating tool, followed closely by the I Am From poem.  

The Poltics of Small Town Voting

I made the leap, y'all. I did the unimaginable, though completely inevitable. I'm excited and ashamed and don't know if Daddy will still respect me, call me son, and slip me gas money every now and again after I confess my transgression.

I switched my voter registration from Mississippi to Tennessee. *Gasp* There, I said it, it's forthwith known throughout the world that I'm a traitor to my Dixieland DeSoto County roots.

Well, really, it's not that catastrophic. It's just more convenient to go down to the precinct in Knoxville in November, cast my vote for Obama, and walk away with my head held high. It sure beats the hell out of the alternative: absentee voting, which is what I've always done until now. In Mississippi, in the primaries, you have to vote with your party, and when I called back in February, I could feel the contempt oozing through the phone lines as I told the woman at the courthouse I'd be needing a Democratic ballot. "Oh, really," she drawled, and I was sure she'd "mistakenly" lose my address. I still shudder when I think about it.

In college, I was very active with the UCA Young Democrats and the Young Democrats of Arkansas. Hell, even the Young Democrats of America, because back in August of '05, I went to the national convention in San Francisco as a representative from the Natural State. Where I wasn't even registered to vote. Oh, the shame.

Despite myriad opportunities to switch my registration, I never did it. Spent countless hours tabling in the Student Center registering others to vote, but never did confess I wasn't an Arkansas voter. Granted, I am a voter. Make no mistakes about that. I've voted in EVERY SINGLE election I could since I turned 18. Even those inconsequential elections to determine the Superintendent of Education and county commissioner. It's just the way my daddy raised me. Daddy is not a religious man. He is skeptical of institutions that require 10 % of your monthly income and water-dunking initiations. But the man votes. Voting is singly important to him, and he raised Jeffrey and me to understand that it is our duty as Americans to vote. He fought for that right in Viet Nam, dammit. Not to vote would be to slap him in the face.

And not to vote in Mississippi will break his heart. Though I haven't lived in Mississippi full-time in 5 years, my father still operates with the understanding that once I'm finished with school, I will move back to DeSoto County, set up a trailer on the 40 acres, and cut his grass when he's too old to do it himself. I won't go into the pros and cons of that set up right now (except to say that I hope Jeffrey feels more inclined to accepting that future than I do), lest I distract myself from the issue at hand: My father is a life-long Mississippian, a law enforcement officer in the Magnolia State, and damn proud of it. He always talked me out of switching my voter registration to Arkansas for some reason or another, and I heeded to his daunting tales of jury duty, the perils of switching my car insurance, and the destruction of the family unit as we know it if I did not vote in the same place he did.

But last night I was out at a free concert in Market Square. The Obama folks were out, and I wanted to find out how I could help out. Well, mostly I wanted a free sticker. When I saw the voter registration forms, I unhesitatingly filled one out. The Obama girl assured me she'd mail it in, and in ever how many weeks, I'll be a registered Tennessee voter. I'm more than a little bit excited.

But please, don't tell my daddy just yet. This is a delicate situation.

For the scene kids, humanities graduate students, and every other young adult who takes himself too seriously

I'm gonna rant a minute, because dammit, this is my blog and I can.  Gird your loins for Timothy at full blast, and if the good lord's willing this will be brief.

Dear Disillusioned Twenty-somethings of America,

Quit your bitching.  Especially those of you with mothers and fathers who love you, college degrees, and hybrid cars.  If you so choose to make everything you do, say, and eat (God.) a political statement, I support your choice.  But don't reprimand me for eating cheese (regardless of the metaphors you use, cheddar IS NOT crack).  Back off of my friends who light up in bars where everyone else is smoking.  It's a bar, dammit.  If you can't stand the smoke, well, you know the rest.  Remember that your reading of Joseph Campbell, Jacques Derrida, and Karl Marx is merely an interpretation, not permission to instigate fights with people who would otherwise probably like you despite your ridiculous upper-middle class oppression.  At least a little.  And for God's sake, get a haircut, take a shower, and get rid of the bandanas around your necks.  Your mama loves you and wants you to wash behind your ears and under your arms, your grandma does not approve of your strategically planned grease ball 'do, and none of you are cowgirls, regardless of what you do with your lassos.  Clean people get jobs.  Jobs give you experience.  Experience, not club drugs and philosophical texts, makes you wise.

Rock crack babies.  Read to the blind.  Recycle til your heart's content.  Do something productive instead of bitching about how the world is going straight to hell.  And don't blame me for global warming because I bought my socks at Wal-Mart.  Blame your SUV-driving parents.

I love you, twenty-somethings.  I'm one of you, and I'm not saying I'm better.  Hell, I'm bitching, too.  But I am saying this:  Learn to act and not speculate, practice and not theorize.  Soy yogurt won't change the world, but teaching a kid to read will.

Bless your hearts.

Timothy

End rant

Until August, Mr. Sisk

I finished up my summer teaching stint last Friday. No more waking at 6:00 a.m. until August. Well, that's probably not accurate either. I teach afternoon classes next semester, and the earliest class I'm enrolled in begins at 11:10. Ah, graduate school.

I'm gonna miss my students from Project GRAD. They were a rowdy bunch, but they were good kids on the whole, and I really believe they've got what it takes to be successful in college. I'm glad I had the experience working with three different classes, because it taught me that just because something works well in one class doesn't necessarily mean it will in the other. One class was a dream, one class was more often a nightmare, and one class was usually somewhere in between. I'm glad I got to experience the full range. I think I might be doing this again next year, and despite your best efforts to convince me otherwise, Laura, I want even more to be a high school teacher. So that's what I think I'll do for a little while after the MA, then see if I feel so inclined to go on for a doctorate.

I'll leave you with a picture of me and my 8 o'clock class, the dream. These kids really shocked me. Starting out as my worst behaved group, they really came a long way by the end of the program. I'm so proud of all of them.

A Father's Day Musing from a Chronic Daddy Worshipper

Everyone knows I suffer from Daddy Worship in the highest order.  I think my father is the best man in the world, and I've written about him several times on this blog.  Despite his hesitation (or inability) to demonstrate affection, my father is the most loving, kind-hearted man I know.  He regularly goes without in order to provide for other people.  When I was little, just after my parents divorced and what little money my father did make was spent on child support and trailer payments, he always, always took my brother and me out for pizza on Friday nights and McDonald's for breakfast on Sunday mornings.  He always made sure we had school clothes and money for field trips and book fairs and anything else we needed, and in many cases wanted.  My father, the ultimate provider.

I was much older when my grandmother confided in me that during those trying times in the late 80s and early 90s my father would often go without eating lunch at work every day of the week in order to have money to spend on Jeffrey and me when we went to visit each weekend.  As a child, I loved trips to my father's house for a few reasons.  Weekends at Daddy's meant hours spent playing with my cousins who lived next door.  It meant eating hamburgers and tea cakes at Grandma's and sitting out under the shade tree at Muffy's.  But, I think what might have been most important to me at least for a while as a naive and pretty much spoiled pre-pubescent boy was that it meant on our weekly Walmart trip, Daddy would buy me whatever I put in the shopping basket.  It never was much, mind you; usually just a package of pens or markers or a Hot Wheels car.  I never asked for outlandish things as a child.  But knowing now how much my father gave of himself to be able to give me those things makes them mean so much more.  And makes me feel a little guilty for not appreciating them as the love tokens they were.

I won't gush too much about Daddy today.  This blog's full of Daddy Worship posts, as are my writer's notebooks, as I'm sure will be the pages of my future volumes of poetry.  I only hope I can be half as hardworking and self-sacrificing as my father is when I grow up.  My daddy's a good man.  My daddy can beat up your daddy.

Happy Father's Day.