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| turn-around
If you have a history of heart trouble, you may want to skip this entry.
Last week I got a phone call from Suzanne, my awesome former co-op from my elementary student teaching placement. There was an opening for the elementary instrumental position at one of the schools where I’d practice-taught, because the district was expanding their program. I still remembered some of the kids’ names. The position was nearly handed off to someone else, under-the-table, un-posted, when Suzanne walked into the principal’s office and told her she knew someone who would be perfect for the position (read: yours truly). It was only two days a week, but that was just right for me, since I was hoping to work another job or two around it. Suzanne said the district would call me sometime in the next week… and I actually thought to myself that this was it, this was what I had been waiting for.
On Monday morning I was in the middle of making an application packet for the Suzanne-position, when the phone rang.
A week and a half before, I had interviewed for a job an hour away in Jersey… an elementary choral/general music position. The school sat randomly in an area that consisted entirely of corn fields and forest, with nothing for miles around. The principal had introduced their area as being an “extremely conservative, traditional and non-diverse” community.
Conservative they may have been, but they were unknowingly offering a job working with small children to a girl-loving, liberal-voting, earth-worshipping former New Yorker. Unbelievable. After seven months of searching, I had a job, a scant three weeks before school started. I was stunned. I asked them if I could have a day or two to think about it. They said I had until tomorrow afternoon.
I hung up the phone and leapt up and down. Then reality set in and I fucking panicked.
Three weeks. If I took the job, I had twenty-one days to get my Jersey certification, find music for them and design a curriculum. Not to mention having an hour commute to contend with (or the worse option, actually moving out to the middle-of-nowhere). This job was a beautiful $40K a year with benefits. This job also meant seriously uprooting myself. This meant trying to make a home for myself in a community where I would be oppressed into every kind of closet imaginable.
My professor’s words were ringing in my ears: “The first year, take whatever job is offered to you!”
So why was it that when I called my parents to tell them the good news, I broke down crying?
I pondered. I screamed. I bawled into the cat’s fur. I asked everyone’s advice. And I still couldn’t come to a decision. What the hell was wrong with me? Was this not my life’s dream? Was this not what I had been working for since I chose my career path when I was fourteen? What would my parents say if I didn’t take the only teaching position that had been offered to me? What would my friends think? And my professors?
Maybe there was a way around it. There had to be. The next morning, I dressed my best and drove to the local school that had an instrumental music opening. I met with the principal. I was expecting that maybe I could worm my way in, get an emergency interview before the afternoon-deadline rolled around… I felt so positive about it, like this was the place I should be. I was already running through the success story in my mind-- "And to think, they almost handed the job to someone else! When I student-taught here! And it was just right for me, you know, because I could still help out with the witchcraft store on the side..."
The principal was new to the building, a crisp little woman of fifty with dyed blonde hair that hung in awkward, poofy strands from too much drying. I explained my situation. I told her that although I already had a job offer for a job in NJ, I would rather work for her. I expected my bravado and honesty to pay off.
I was instead informed that they were interviewing a man that afternoon who had unexpectedly gotten his certification, who had been working with in the district for a long while. I was informed that the interview was really only a formality, because they pretty well intended to hire him.
I staggered away from the building with the horrible realization that I had three hours to make a decision that was going to dramatically impact the course of my life. There are moments when you see time spreading out like a web all around you, like those rope webs in the climbing arenas when you were a kid. There are moments when you feel the weight of your decisions, when a yes or a no can send you plunging off into a place from which there’s no return. We make a dozen choices like this in a day… we take a different route home from work, and unknowingly avoid the horrible car-accident. We eat at the wrong place and are laid-up with food poisoning for three days. But it’s rare that you can actually see such a choice laid out… and rare that you have only three hours to make your move.
Every bit of logic in me cried out to take the job: this is what my ridiculously over-priced degree was in. I knew I could do the work. $40K a year. Health insurance. The start of a career. Building the resume. Gaining experience. Maintaining the respect of others.
But when I sat down and actually pictured working there, I felt positively sick. It was too far. It was too close-minded a community. In a way which I cannot adequately describe with words, it was not where I wanted to be.
Kate’s theory rang in my mind: “the minute you get what you want, you no longer want it.” But I already had some of what I wanted: I had the great boho apartment, and the friends, and the happy life. I had the kitty cat, and the stove, and the opportunity to create, uninterrupted, whenever the mood struck me. I had the town that I adored, with two pizza places, a Korean place, Chinese place, and two convenience stores in easy walking distance. I had the religious community that I had been searching for for so long.
I talked to more people. Laura, who had graduated last year as music ed and had since gone renegade, so happened to IM me, and was an enormous help. I called my mom. She said, “honey, remember that this is a job offer, like an invitation to a party. You have the option to say no. A job is like a marriage… if people on both ends aren’t happy with the arrangement, it is not going to work.” This was quite different from my professor’s rallying cry of “Take whatever job you get [even if it makes you miserable]!”
I was one of the top students in my education courses... I had the A's, I had the impossibly-hard student teaching placement... but the crazy thing was, the longer I was out of school, the less I was sure that I even wanted to teach. I was realizing for the first time that a world existed outside of the education system, and was terrified of limiting myself. I was beginning to suspect that maybe what I really loved was the music, and creation, and the learning, and not so much transferring that knowledge to others. I thought about late nights designing lesson plans and figuring out assessment and what to do with problem children and how to deal with parents. I thought about lying through every moment of my day about who I was and what I believed, about pressing myself down again into the school-system-normalcy/conformity. And I no longer wanted it.
I let go of my neurotic need to make others like me. I let go of the concept of what I was “supposed” to do.
I was offered a teaching job... the primary goal of my life for the past several months. And Tuesday afternoon, I called them up, and I turned it down. I’ve realized that what I want and need right now is to have time to freelance, and experience, and work other jobs, and to think about where it really is I want to go next. And if in a year I miss being engulfed in music and I feel the ache to teach, then I re-apply, and I enter the job market as a wiser, more complete person than I am now. And if I find that I can get through my life a-okay without drilling scales into the young minds of America, I do something else.
I’m a little afraid for what will come.
But I am delighted with the reckless possibility of it.
... so this is freedom. | | |
| Badminton + Holding Beer = Beerminton!
Our daring author attempts to figure out how to hold the Yuengling and serve simultaneously.
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| Pageant and PleasantrySomeone once told me that I write best when I ought to be doing
something else. So for now, the dishes and laundry can wait a little
while.
It’s been a few weeks since we took the roadtrip up to
Palmyra for the LDS Pageant, but I haven’t really written an entry on
it yet. I’ve finally realized that this is probably because I’m not
sure exactly what I want to say about it, what angle to play it from.
In one respect, I guess it was very much what you would expect from a
roadtrip taken by a bunch of twenty-somethings: we rented a dark blue
minivan and named it “Killa”, and brought along an absurd amount of
food. We took a random detour to Taughannock Falls that turned out to
be truly awesome. We had two car mascots, a camel animal cracker AND a
miniature, stuffed effigy of Captain Jack Sparrow. We even picked up an
unsuspecting fifth passenger, Jason of the Young Single Adults group,
who mostly just sat in the back-back seat the whole drive up in what I
assumed was a silence derived from sheer terror (as it turned out
later, he was just a slightly weird and extremely quiet guy.. although
he’s the one who suggested the detour, so yay for Jason).
Ways
in which this was not such a normal roadtrip: well, this was, after
all, something of a Church-of-the-Latter-Day-Saint Pilgrimage. This
meant having the rather strange experience of touring the farm where
Joseph Smith grew up, including the path (known as the Sacred Grove)
where he is supposed to have seen God and Jesus as he was praying and
asking for guidance as to which church he should join. The farm was
rather over-run with tourists, many of whom were probably LDSers, and
some of whom were probably just curious passers-by such as myself. It
was Rachael who later put into words what I’d been feeling while I was
there— can a place truly be holy, or is it the belief in a place that
gives it it’s feeling of magic? She also expressed annoyance at the
people who were walking around what the LDS church considers to be an
extremely sacred place with an air of utter irreverence… people
chatting about what movies they’d seen, kids playing with squirt-fans.
There were others who were clearly more respectful, staring off into
the woods as if to wonder “Was this the place where it happened?” All
in all, it was a very strange mix.
I’m glad to report that I got
through the day as the polite onlooker, and pressed down the urge to
engage people in debate at every possible moment. We were, after all,
guests of Eric and his family, and were doing our best to be neutral
and discreet. The only person I really wanted to dig into was the
slightly insane tour guide at the place where the Book of Mormon was
first published—but even Eric’s devout sister thought she was a little
intense, so I don’t feel so bad about wanting to throttle her. *g*
As
for the Pageant itself… let me speak from the theatrical perspective
first, and say that I thought it was a pretty cool thing to just watch.
The stage is twelve levels, built on the side of Hill Cumorah (where
Joseph Smith is supposed to have found the golden plates). The special
effects, which included a lightning storm, the explosion of a city, and
a big glowing Jesus floating down out of the sky, were much better than
what I was expecting (especially for an outdoor facility). If anyone
ever has the chance to go, I advise you to check it out… it’s one of
those things that’s worth seeing once in your lifetime just for the
sake of seeing it. Get there early for a good seat, and to avoid the
rather vicious anti-LDS-protesters who line the entrance (we exited
afterward singing “All You Need is Love” loudly and obnoxiously, and
got some laughs from fellow audience-members). It never fails to amaze
me that people can’t just leave each other the hell alone. Then again,
while I was there I also received a very emphatic LDS pamphlet about
how marriage should only be between men and women… and so I was weirdly
torn between being pissed off at the protesters for giving the LDSers
such a hard time, but also being a ruffled at the LDSers. Everyone I
met there was incredibly nice and friendly… but in the back of my mind,
I found myself wondering if they would have acted the same way had they
known who (what?) I actually am.
I’d been hoping to get a few
things out of the trip, and did… for one thing, taking the religion out
of it for a minute, I got to see a very cool show on a scale such as
I’ve never witnessed. Yet I was also hoping to gain a better
understanding of the LDS faith from this weekend, and certainly came
away knowing more than I had. My thoughts on the actual religion and
history aren’t something I have the energy to get into here… but
needless to say, though I’m glad I learned more, the Church of LDS is
definitely not for me. | | |
| So I walked down to Ostara today to return the Victorian tea hat that I borrowed, only to discover that no one was there. Instead, I found two handwritten signs taped to the door:
"Went home early today due to migraine. Sorry!"
and
"New Moon is at 12:31 am. Mercury is still in retrogade. No magic until July 28th!"
... I officially work in the coolest place ever. | | |
| From the notebook, July 10:
>>Today the laundromat is boasting an air conditioning system that
manages to toss you only the occassional tantalizing breeze, but which
mostly just leaves you sweating your balls off. It is this that I'm
attempting to record the events of the past several days while ignoring
the awesome feeling of my shirt sticking to my back.
Saturday
turned out to be quite eventful, even by my standards. Ben hired Angel
and I (hired is perhaps the wrong word, as we weren't actually paid) to
stand outside the restaurant and play duets, as Main St. was hosting an
event for Alix's Lemonade Stand. Unfortunately, despite five practice sessions, we really sounded quite bad due to
intonation issues and Angel's inability to read rhythm (I could say so much more here). It's ironic, then,
that I got more publicity on Saturday then ever before, getting
photographed by two newspapers and having an appearance on the news
that evening.
On my way back, on a whim, I took a different
route home from work than usual. As I was passing Ostara, out came
Mary-the-Mama-Witch, threatening to turn a skateboarding teenager into
a toad. As she turned (and the skater-boy made a run for it), she saw
me, grabbed me, screamed, gave me a big kiss on the cheek, and pulled
me inside.
Lo and behold, there stood Sarah and Eric.
Perhaps
I should explain. I had recommended the witchcraft supply shop to them
weeks ago, after I stopped in there almost on accident and had an
hour-long conversation with the owner, Mary. At the time I was
unemployed and asked if she was hiring-- she chuckled and told me to
'get in line', which didn't especially surprise me. I'm sure that
places like that always have a long list of people looking to work
there. But she had taken down my information just the same. Now, today,
my friends had just happened to wander into the shop, and, being the
excellent covnersationalist she is, Mary asked how they'd heard about
her place?
"Our friend Crystal told us about it."
"You know Crystal?!"
Mary
had, in fact, decided it was time to hire some extra help.... and somehow, I had jumped to the top of her long-list of prospective employees. Unfortunately, she had misplaced the paper that had my number on it. My friends had
provided her with my number, before I had wandered by and literally run
into her on the street.
I could not quite pass all of this off
as mere coincidence, nor do I think she could, and I was hired on the spot. It probably won't be
much, just a few hours a week to help out (especially when the town
goes nuts for Musikfest in a few weeks). Just the same, I'm quite
excited about working there, and amused that all of the occult
background I've accumulated may actually be a job skill.
On the
other end of the spectrum, this weekend four of us are headed up to
Palmyra NY (about a five hour ride) to see the giant-scale L.D.S.
Pageant. It has a 12-level stage and a cast of 600 people, and should
be an awesome experience (plus we get to tour lots of sites sacred to
the story of the formation of the Church of Ladder-Day Saints). Between
the Pageant itself (we agreed unanimously that "Pageant" ought to be
capitalized based on how people sound when they refer to it) and
spending lots of time with Eric's family, I'm sure this weekend will be
a very memorable experience.
Just when I think things can't get any more interesting, life gets stranger and stranger...
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