Wireless

The Highway 17 bus, which I take when I go to the alma mater, now has wireless access. This makes things easier in some ways (for one thing, I can check email from students and so forth before I get to my office), though most of the time I put on my headphones and listen to any one of a number of meditation CDs that take about 45 minutes to run (that's how long the commute takes on the bus). Due to the usual ailment, I no longer drive Highway 17 (driving for any distance longer than about 30-40 minutes just about takes the wind out of my sails for the rest of the day--so I am very grateful for the Highway 17 bus, which makes it possible for me to be a lot more mobile and have far less sun exposure than when I drive a car).

I have to say that, though it has not been easy at all for me physically and I probably should not push my illness by teaching, something always keeps me trying to go back. I currently teach 2.5 hours a week (one class), and it is pushing me to the very limits of my physical abilities (for those of you who don't know, I was diagnosed with lupus and fibromyalgia in 1993). I have very much been reminded every day of my illness since I returned, and it takes a lot out of me. I moved up a tiny notch, from teaching associate to lecturer, and am content with the fact that, because I cannot teach very many classes, I may always stay a lecturer. Just being a teacher again, in whatever capacity, is good for my spirit. It did make finishing the book more difficult (actually, my illness is the biggest reason it's taken me 7 years to finish this book), but at least I have a quiet office to work in sometimes, with a nice view.

It was very disorienting to go back after two years of relative freedom, and yet I really believe that my Higher Power had some sort of plan for me--the decision felt more right than wrong. At first, I wondered if I had made the right decision--but then I saw old friends and professors, and I got a wonderful class with whom I have bonded tremendously--I shall miss them terribly at semester's end, but most of them are trying to register for my next class, so maybe I won't have to miss them all that much! What happens beyond this semester, I don't know. I hope I can be well enough to go back in the Fall. I am keeping my fingers crossed, as always.

This has nothing at all to do with the Highway 17 bus having wireless access now, except that I am grateful for it, as it makes my life a little bit easier.

Oh--but I did want to tell a story here. My dear friend Harvey Birenbaum, who was my professor of mythology and of William Blake's poetry, always encouraged me to try and find ways to work with my illness and find the gifts within it (he was extremely ill with heart trouble and died of it in September of 2005). Harvey was the most brilliant man I ever met, and yet one day, in our mythology class, I stumped him!
He was talking about how William Blake didn't like circles (circle imagery, etc.), and I remembered a few lines from a Blake poem which I loved:

I give you the end of a golden string,
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate
Built in Jerusalem's wall.

So, Harvey was going on about how William Blake didn't like circles, and I piped up and said, "But what about the golden string, the one that gets wound up into a ball?"
Harvey sat and thought and thought--and finally laughed said, "I do not know!" We had a good chuckle about that.

Upon my return to the alma mater this semester, I sat at my desk on my first day, feeling physically awful (too much sun exposure at State, always, in August). I asked Harvey for some kind of sign that I had made the right decision. Then I opened my desk drawers to put things away and arrange them. When I opened the first drawer, I heard something roll into the far end, and opened it wider to discover that the only thing in that drawer--in the entirety of my side of the desk, in fact--was a rather long length of beige string, neatly wound into a tight and perfect ball.

Not quite golden, but good enough to say, "Thanks."