Happy Birthday to Me
03/18/2003

It's my birthday today. And it is good to be alive, to be young, feel young, enjoy living, teaching, even struggling. It has been a good day so far -- despite my attempts to hide its being my birthday from my students, they found out (of course they did). I went into the Gay Straight Alliance meeting, and T. had baked a cake for me -- a little square of chocolate cake with a little white candle. K.R. played the guitar and everyone sang the most harmonized "Happy Birthday" that has ever been sung to me. It was very sweet. And yet... And yet there is a deep, deep sadness inside. I do not understand the world. I am unable wrap my brain around the absurdity of the....I don't know, the human condition, the condition of the world going against the human condition maybe, the absurdity of all the pieces that had to come together against all probability (think "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead") for the world to come to this, and to think it all starts with a few individuals..... I cannot fathom what is happening, what has happened, what will be. I feel like I am in an absurdist play, waiting things out, protesting, but feeling insignificant, searching for meaning, but realizing the meaningfulness I find may just be irrelevant. But fuck it, I went out there today and taught my 9th graders about the apartheid, helping them to make connections so what we are talking about is not "over there in South Africa," so they see how individuals can be and ARE powerful...because I do believe that. I talked with my juniors about Shakespeare and how his contemporaries had close to double the number of working vocabulary we do because they relied on human contact for information (and they cared more about the pleasures of language in addition to the information inherent in the language). Maybe it all seems disconnected from what is happening in the world, but it is not. Human contact, compassion, slowing down enough to experience language, appreciate its sounds, talk to each other not only with the reason of wanting to schedule something at a later date... If this is an absurdist play, I am glad I am playing the teacher who does see some meaning in life. If only I can succeed in showing it to others. Despite it all, despite the sadness, it is a good birthday. I am happy to be alive. I just wish others can experience the same luxury.