Lazarus

Greetings!

You've been dying to know, haven't you? I mean, I *must* have been up to something truly fascinating, given my extended absence, right?

Uh, I wouldn't go that far. But here's a synopsis:

1. I've been teaching High School english for the last 4 weeks.

Fuck me. I can turn from Miss Honey  to Miss Trunchbull* in, like, 2 seconds flat. Ok so I wasn't swinging kiddies by their pigtails. In fact I never even raised my voice. My 30 second silences and stares, however, positively bristled with barely contained fury. Kids were pretty much curling into the foetal position whilst in their seats. Speak whilst I'm speaking and I WILL fuck you up, kids.

On the other side of the equation, my Year 7s thought I was 'cute' and would squabble for the privilege of handing out my worksheets for me. If one of the students dared to speak over the top of me, the adorable but slightly terrifying islander girls down the front growled at them to "shutttupandlissentomissokay".

My littlies were so darn cute. Their classroom teacher had told me that they were 'quite dim', and described one of the children as 'basically inbred' - charmed, I'm sure. I was teaching a unit on poetry, but the classroom teacher seemed very reluctant for me to actually use poems in the classroom as 'they wouldn't understand them'. Rather, I was to just teach them poetic features, such as simile, onomatopoeia, etc etc. Without reading a poem. Uh, yeh. That sounds...fun.

After two classes of boring the students and myself silly with totally decontextualised learning "Winter is a symbol for.... anyone? Anyone?", I decided that this was bullshit and started teaching poems. Yeah, it took them a while to understand them. It's fucking poetry to fuck's sake, it's hard to understand sometimes. A couple of lessons after that, they were requesting different types of poems, and eagerly collecting my worksheets if they had to miss my class for scripture ("Can I read it at home Miss, and try and figure out what it means?"). They were finding meanings in poems that I hadn't even thought of.

Best of all, in my last lesson, one of the 'dim' students, brought me in a gift. Earlier, she and I had spoken in the corridor about what she had learned previously in poetry. We were briefly talking about the Australian poetic ballad tradition, and she mentioned a poem about a bushranger... It seemed she remembered more of the conversation than I did, because her gift to me was a edited and reworked edition of this poem, three stanzas long. I was so fucking proud of her. I know she felt like she was 'stupid'. I know she was scared of sharing her work because she felt it was 'wrong'. But she had the guts to write that and give it to me, and you know what? It was pretty bloody good.

The moral of the story: Don't underestimate kids, even if someone tells you they won't get it. So the fuck what. Try. Maybe have some fun. We have some kids don't do well at English, so we just make it really boring for them and hope that the droll bullshit we tried to drill into them with sticks a little bit? I'd rather make it fun and give them a reason to try harder, I'd rather hide the work behind investigation, performance and creation. Hey, I'm not even going to be a teacher, and even I can figure that out.

*Matilda reference. Love the Dahl.

2. Favourite quotes from the school
* But Miss, that's just not gangsta!
* (in reference to 'the beast with two backs' line from Othello) Miss, are they talking about anal?
* (the toughest scariest girl at school, on the sidelines at school sport) Hey Miss look I taught myself to crochet off YouTube! (slightly worried about the crochet hook)
* Hey, Miss! You look like Julia Gillard. But younger and prettier! Um, no offence! (I guess I asked for it, with my reddish bob and killer glare)


3. I'm having a small sexuality crisis. I'm definitely gayer than what I was previously. I'm flirting with women... crushing on women... actively fantasising about the breasts, mouths, skin and pussies of women I meet... having sex dreams about women. I even have a 'type'. I still like men, but that attraction is nowhere near as exclusive as it once was. Confusing. See what living in the inner west of Sydney will do to a gal?

4. My ex - Dean -  has contacted me again. Usually I ignore him. We haven't talked for 3-4 years on account of particularly ugly break up. I called him 'impotence-man' and 'abortion survivor', he called me a cuntslutwhore and then called the cops on me (slightly problematic due to familial ties with drug cultivation).
Yeh, it wasn't pretty.
But slowly, over the last year, I've missed his presence more and more. We were together for 7 years, we were friends, he helped me grow up. And whilst I am almost as different as possible from the 17 year old girl he met, and from the man he is (was?), I have an urge to... reconcile? I don't think it's a get-back-together thing, I think he's still with the fat fucking pommy cunt  he was rooting from redhotpie.com. And honestly I have not come this far only to go backwards into his cringe-worthy suburban mediocre sphere. But I miss him. I'm sorry for hurting him. And I know he seeks my forgiveness also. Is it all pointless though? Bringing up past hurts for nothing?

TOTALLY EXTREME writers block

Uni is done for the year. This time next year I'll already be working in schools, which is absofriggenlutely exciting. I've had a tough but incredibly satisfying year, and I've done pretty darn well in the marks department too. Giving up gainful employment.. neglecting my figure, friends and love life - yep, its all been worth it. Maybe not the getting fat bit. Seriously. My ass has expanded to OUT OF CONTROL proportions. It's now actually developed into quite an impressive badonkydonk (sp? I'm not quite hep with the homegirl lingo)

Anywaysies, I've been making flimsy excuses for not posting, but the truth of the matter is, I've lost my momentum. I nearly put a really, really, really shite poem up a couple of weeks ago, but I decided that my legion of loyal readers (ok, yes, it's a very small legion) deserved something better than that. D'ya reckon you could help me out? In the comments section, I'd like you to post a question for me to answer, or a suggested topic for me to discuss. Hopefully that will get me back into the swing of this blogging thing. Because I've really missed it, you know.

PS yes dawg, I am no longer PMSing
PPS yes Stephen, that means I'll be ovulating soon, too.

Revoltingly Self-Aware Narcissist

Well. Geeze. It's come to this. Venting my crap in my own blog which I can't envisage anyone ever reading of their own free will.

I know I'll get bored at one point and start spewing forth graphic details about my sex life in order to shock/amaze/revolt any imagined followers into a state where they are compelled to comment on posts JUST SO I CAN PROVE THAT IM NOT BLOODY WELL TYPING TO MYSELF. Oh. yes, sorry, I should have warned you. I am rather fond of ye olde caps lock. I also overuse commas and "..."s. Hopefully I will not procure any additional stalkers with foot fetishes in this exercise - I got enough of those via myspace, thanks.

I'm two paragraphs in and I'm already losing track of my own structure. Let's just call it modernist or some shit.