Happy Friday.

This is a lightly edited version of an actual email I actually sent this morning.

Hello and good morning and happy Friday!

I am not one of those people who usually says things to people like “happy Friday”, but today I think I am in a “happy Friday” kind of mood.

Normally I don’t like to say it because it feels to me like saying, “Our lives are so dreary and unfulfilling during the week that we have to pretend that each Friday is something to be celebrated because it allows us two whole days of not-soul-crushing-tedium and that is the best we are willing to hope for out of life anymore” and that just is not how I feel about life and I have had those kind of jobs (and lives) and I am simply not going to do that ever again, thank you very much.

But today I am in kind of a happy “happy Friday” kind of mood. The kind of mood that is all like, “Hey, isn’t it great that we get a couple of days to chill out and just focus on the things in our lives that bring us the most joy? And how great is that?”

This week started out pretty tough for me, but now I am feeling a bit better about life. I still have a ton of work to do and my weekend is going to be packed to the gills, but I think that if I hunker down, I should be able to do what I need to do. There is something nice about having alot of work to do and also the ability to do it.

Also, I’m at the point in the semester when I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I enjoy school, I really do, but I am looking forward to the summer. I think I will enjoy the routine of working full-time again and then having virtually nothing else I am required to do past 5 o’clock. I am looking forward to being able to make a little bit of money, but also being limited in how much time I have to spend that money; I won’t be able to, say, go to Spain for two weeks. That makes me sad, but it also means I will just have to find smaller adventures and I tend to enjoy those a lot anyway.

Also, I have a longer story I think I would like to work on over the summer and I also will have the time to run more (I haven’t had time to run in weeks) and maybe even go on a some hikes! I haven’t hiked in ages.

Anyway, I am in a “happy Friday” kind of mood. I hope that the world is too.

.
.
.

How Trees Teach.

How Trees Teach;

A Hypothetical Pedagogical Dialogue

by james bezerra

EXTERIOR, NIGHT. A WILLOW TREE sits atop a single hill in an otherwise flat plain. The sky is speckled with the pinprick light of stars. The shape of a man can just barely be seen as he trudges up the side of the hill. He reaches the top and stands under the willow, panting. He the only teacher in the town’s one-room school house at the bottom of the hill. His name is CHATSWORTH and he sits down and gazes out over the plains.

CHATSWORTH (speaking to the WILLOW TREE): I come here to talk to you when I don’t know what to do. My students, today I don’t even know if I helped them at all. They all had their phones out. I can’t get them to put their phones away. I have asked them and they put them away for a little while, but by the next day, there they are again, the phones again.

WILLOW TREE: (The night breeze lifts the long wisps of the WILLOW TREE’s branches high into the air.)

CHATSWORTH: I know! That’s how I felt too. I never would have gotten away with that when I was in school. We used to respect the instructors. When your teacher said to sit your butt down and read, that’s exactly what you did.

WILLOW TREE: (The breeze slips away and the wisps sink back down and the tree seems to be shrugging.)

CHATSWORTH: Okay, that may not be exactly how it was. Selective memory comes with age, but still, we didn’t have the phones. They seem like such a distraction. I really do believe that if I could get them to put them away then I would really be able to teach them, you know? Teach them the way that I was taught. It worked well for me.

WILLOW TREE: (A much more jagged breeze whips some of the wisps quickly up into the air, where they vibrate violently.)

CHATSWORTH: I know, I know. They live in a world that is unlike the one I grew up in, and that isn’t just age talking. They’re inundated with everything; ads and infotainment and even more ads. There must be a way to take what I have been taught and craft it to help them understand the world that they are going to have to survive in. It is likely a world that will require the same lessons, but new parables with which to teach them.

WILLOW TREE: (The wind releases the wisps and they settle back into place as they were earlier in the night.)

CHATSWORTH: You always seem to have the answers.

CHATSWORTH gets to his feet, pats the WILLOW TREE and begins to trot back down the hill, whistling as he goes.

.

.

.