Read the truth...hurt

It's been a whirlwind week. Lots and lots of meetings, and lesson planning, and more meetings, and lesson plan editing and lunch my university colleagues and all sorts of errands. I've been running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Phew. Still, managed to read two books and boy, did they blow me away. The first was Myla Goldberg's Bee Season. I didn't catch the movie and didn't feel compelled to, but the book...oh my God. The first couple of pages blew me away. I got that chill I got when I was starting out Memoirs of a Geisha. Didn't last; the story quickly lost its momentum, but I ended up really liking it anyhow. I especially liked this little truth, which is such an acute little dose of reality:

Eliza only half listens as Bergermeyer works her way down the rows of seats. In smarter classrooms, chair backs are free from petrified Bubble Yum. Smooth desktops are unmarred by pencil tips, compass points, and scissors blades. Eliza suspects that the school's disfigured desks and chairs are shunted into classrooms like hers at the end of every quarter, seems to remember a smattering of pristine desks disappearing from her classrooms over spring and winter breaks to be replaced by their older, uglier cousins.

The other book I read was The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran and I wasn't surprised I loved it. I'd already heard so much about it. It's a classic. I loved the entire chapter on love, of course, it's lovely - and the one on teaching, since I am one. But my favorite line of all, which is just so real to me - "And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation." I almost cried when I read that, because it touched me and resonated with me so deeply, it was like it was drawn from my own soul. Sigh. I hate feeling so deeply. This is my problem. I can get drawn into anything. Like a book. Or a TV show. Or someone else. Until I can't separate myself and I get swallowed up and feel like I'm drowning. Sigh.

Final thought: Emotions need boundaries.