How wise I am to have instructed the butler
to instruct the first footman to instruct the second
footman to instruct the doorman to order my carriage;
I am about to volunteer a definition of marriage.
Just as I know that there are two Hagens, Walter and Copen,
I know that marriage is a legal and religious alliance entered
into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut and a
woman who can't sleep with the window open.
Moreover, just as I am unsure of the difference between
flora and fauna and flotsam and jetsam,
I am quite sure that marriage is the alliance of two people
one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other
never forgetsam,
And he refuses to believe there is a leak in the water pipe or
the gas pipe and she is convinced she is about to asphyxiate
or drown,
And she says Quick get up and get my hairbrushes off the
windowsill, it's raining in, and he replies Oh they're all right,

it's only raining straight down.
That is why marriage is so much more interesting than divorce,
Because it's the only known example of the happy meeting of
the immovable object and the irresistible force.
So I hope husbands and wives will continue to debate and
combat over everything debatable and combatable,
Because I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life,
particularly if he has income and she is pattable.

Yiska wants to take Benny home with her after school and whisk him past her mother and up to her room but she knows her mother would watch her like a hawk especially if she had Benny in tow and would ask her all sorts of questions and where do you think you are going with him? but she can dream about it dream she has brought him home and as she passes her mother in the kitchen her mother in one of her dark moods preparing dinner she climbs the stairs slowly imagining Benny is behind her walking up the stairs probably watching her legs or her *** his eyes glued but she doesn't know so she imagines he is and when she gets to the top of the stairs she pauses on the landing and looks down the stairs and waits listening to the radio her mother has just turned on some classical stuff she pauses there pretending Benny has stopped her and has put his arms around her waist and has laid his hands on her *** and she believes she can feel it his hands his fingers moving but it's in the head in her imagination but no harm in pretending so she lingers there for a short duration looking along the landing wrapping her own arms about herself kissing her shoulder don't forget to change out of your school uniform her mother calls out from below stairs I won't she calls back hugging herself extra tight patting her own *** with a hand as she hoped he would do if he were there and they were standing where she is now and put your ***** blouse in the linen basket her mother calls up ok she calls back unhugging herself walking along the landing walking past her parent's room tempted to peek in wondering if she should just a quick glimpse she stops outside her parent's room and opens the door quietly and peers inside imagining she has Benny beside her and she's showing him inside at the big double bed the tallboy the dressing table where her mother has all her make up and perfumes and drugs for her depression and hairbrushes and the mirror facing her and she says to herself-and the imagined Benny- nice bed what you reckon? make a good bed to do it in? the room smells of perfume of all kinds and a scent of bodies and staleness she is tempted to go lay on the bed and feel it beneath her and makes out they are doing things him beside her touching her and she kisses him and he putting his hand along her thigh and make sure you fold up your school skirt and jumper I don't want it just thrown anywhere her mother calls up to her from downstairs she closes the door to her parent's room and says loudly down the stairs I will fold them up and walks to her own room taking Benny’s imagined hand in hers and enters her own room and closes the door behind her and looks around the room as if through his eyes her mother has been in here and tidied up put things away picked up stuff from the floor taken away the tea plate she'd left there the night before and the soiled linen she'd let drop by the bed she stands there and sighs a window is open to let in air-breath of fresh air her mother calls it-the curtains flap in the breeze sounds from neighbours in their gardens kids from down the street she goes to the window and closes it and looks out at the surrounding area making out Benny’s still behind her his arms around her waist his lips kissing her neck she closes the curtains and stares around the room focusing on her single bed with its pink flowery cover her mother bought her Teddy Bear  now ageing by her pillow not that big she says over her shoulder to the pretend Benny but we could still do it if we're careful she whispers to herself she sits on the bed and stares at her Teddy some nights he is Benny and she hugs him and kisses him and has him next to her as she settles down but Teddy's a lousy lover he does nothing and says nothing she sits the make believe Benny next to her on the bed imagines his hand is tapping the bed be ok Benny says using her voice she stands up and begins to take off her school jumper unbuttoning the green buttons and pulling off and dropping it on the bed then unties the green patterned tie and takes it off and tosses it over her shoulder she sighs closes her eyes you unbutton the blouse she tells the make believe Benny and her fingers unbutton the blouse one by one slowly and once it is unbuttoned she lets his fingers-hers really- take it off of her body and drop it onto the floor what do you think? she asks him shall l take off the skirt or you? her fingers unzip the zip and pulls it down and once loose the skirt falls to the floor and she kicks it across the room and stands there eyes closed pretending he is studying her in her small bra and ******* she waits for his words his comments what are you doing there? and why are the clothes scattered all over the place her mother says from the open door Yiska opens her eyes and stares at her mother standing sullen faced by her bedroom door day dreaming Yiska says about what? her mother asks picking up the school skirt from the floor and folding it neatly and gazing at her daughter stern eyed just day dreaming Yiska says watching her mother putting the clothes in a pile and picking the ***** blouse from the floor and holding the soiled linen in her hands this room was tidy why untidy it? her mother says sorry wasn't thinking Yiska says glad her mother couldn't read her thoughts or see the imagined Benny kissing her neck and whose right hand was fondling her right *** because if she could she'd have a fit.

on a hot summer day of popsicles and cantaloupes
we're on the asphalt playing tag and pushing swings;
my pigtails bouncing from skippers and jump ropes.
i'm wearing suspenders and a bow tie
and you're in a baby blue dress with sunflowers in your hair
and there are gems in the corners of your eyes.
we're walking across balance beams and meeting halfway
but the sound of 80s music blaring
from the windows of my mother's voice is calling me away.
i look into the young sunshine in your eyes that lured me to stay.

on a rainy spring day of dr. seuss books and board games
we're under a blanket fort making shadows and telling secrets
with our minds getting so lost in stories until we forget our names.
i'm clenching my pink teddy bear, in love, yet in fear,
and you've glow sticks and their light in your hands
let's dance and go crazy, you whisper in my ear.
we're singing into hairbrushes and playing dress up
but the sound of the doorbell ringing
from your father's door taunts us, saying we obsess too much
but we don't care.
you kissed me for the first time and i knew without it i'd be messed up.

I want to mow the grass in your heart
so maybe weeds will stop growing in the chambers.
I see how your breath is interrupted sometimes, you hiccup
out of an intoxicating sadness
mall fountain no one tosses their dimes and wishes in.

I bought you a set of those antique hairbrushes, hand mirrors
so heavy in their silver lace
beautiful like doilies or handkerchiefs for sneezing.
May it bring you silkworms rather than one from slimy earth.

Dear you, it can be okay not to talk about
how you feel and who you love and why you love me
as long as you feel it, please know that I believe it is there.

It can be okay to brush your hair looking into a vanity,
pretending that I am your lover overseas
because you feel that way
vines as big as the Berlin Wall block your heart from mine.

And still, we love
despite the wasp nest, the sadness bugs inside.

Lovely thoughts are shackles.
They invoke what even the microscope
omits from the commentary
Well-prepared cups of tea on Sunday afternoons
The dragging of fountain pens retracing ornate loops.

Each a relief from the threat of whatever crisis interred
by the quiet of a room
The practical, the indulgent, without progression.

The contemporary pastoral
is to be found
Amongst old boxes
of  boy's adventure paperbacks
and girl's glitterworn and broken hairbrushes
Shooting the mind off to tragedies
whirring still away at even further distances.

Memories, like sentiments
when copacetic
Provoking always the invasive link
the dependent, the pathetic.

A picture of a doomed ship in storm
Hung on the red carpeted wall of a restaurant

A jar of olives
left untouched
for decorative purposes
in the old grain store
which now serves unfiltered coffee
and plays loud but pleasing music
'til 6 p.m.

What I have spoken of are McGuffins.
The mind distracts.
Yes, the mind encounters,
we discover, we make lists.
But if you can remember
minutiae, try then to remember
History is the repetition of revelations.
The reel does not cut off.

In short,
don't congratulate
Yourself about life
until you've at least seen the nursing home.

We flood into the auditorium like a frenzied herd of animals, pushing at the gates. We crowd each other, everyone frantically stumbling into seats. My anxiety isn't nearly as binding as one would think it would be and my mind goes into a state of total strategy.

2 minutes to get to the girl upstairs

I map out battle plans, trying to see if it would even be possible to reach my best friend on the third floor. Only four floor above me, and yet this is the farthest from her I've felt in years.

1 minute to get the library

My dreams of being a hero to the girl I have loved since the second grade plummet, just like my heart, and my leg bounces nervously. Libraries have always been safe. Libraries have always been home. But not even books can help me this time.

30 minutes to get to the sanctuary

Home is so far away that it isn't even an option I should allow myself to consider. I consider my grandmother at home alone, and I wonder if she's thinking of me. I wonder if she is even aware that her granddaughter is holed up behind auditorium walls, daydreaming about escape plans instead of cute boys. Trying to pass on comfort, instead of passing notes.

1 minute to get to the makeup room

I know this part of the school better than anywhere else. The theatre is sacred, and I have dedicated my life to the stories on the stage. The makeup room is where my friends share everything from stories to eyeliner to hairbrushes to kisses. It is a room built for anxiety, and pre-show jitters. I wonder if it would calm the nerves I have now.

30 seconds to get to the wood room

It's interesting that the rooms that have been my safe places for years, could truly be my safe havens as I wait for attack. The room hidden under the stage is dusty, and full of dismantled sets and large, clunky monitors. I would if those monitors would let me see the action, like watching a film from the safety of your home, watching reality from the safety of four concrete walls.

15 seconds to get to the scene shop

It's the safest place in the school. I have spent a lifetime in there, washing paint off of hands. I wonder if I could ever look at that mess sink the same way, if I had to use it to clean blood off instead. I consider the way this day has changed all of these rooms forever. Will I ever wipe down a makeup room counter without imagining hiding beneath it? Will I ever check out a book without imagining using it for a shield? Will I ever see my best friend's face without imaging myself jumping in front of a bullet? This day, no matter the outcome, has invaded my most sacred spaces, and turned this school into an battle ground. I pray that it will not turn the school into a graveyard.

A muffled voice lets out a sigh on the teacher's radio. The herd stands back up, and we return to our lives. Everyone is safe. My mind shuts off the timer, stops counting the seconds, erases the maps.

The space between me and the world doesn't seem quite as important anymore.

More of these celebrities
cascading through the TV screen
selling me **** I don’t want
telling me how to live
how to donate for starving kids
in a country they’d never heard of.
Look at their eyes,
nothing. Nothing there.
Vapid curiosities
the lot of them.
They fascinate me,
in the way a kitten
is fascinated by a bug.

Look at those eyes,
nothing there.
Death in a fur coat
and high heels.
Mascaraed with hairbrushes.
I can’t see myself
bedding someone like that.
For once,
I don’t hate myself enough.

"ÇOK TEŞEKKÜR EDERİM!"
("THANK YOU VERY MUCH!")

Erdoğan "hasn't got
much the English!"

I am his "Sir!" and
he watches my mouth move

but the English so he says
as I watch him wrestle the words

"Gets stuck in the teeth is not
reaching the ears!"

He kisses my hand and
touches it to his forehead.

I try to turn the tables
put myself in his  position.

"Erdoğan teach me
one Turkish word a day!"

He is overjoyed to teach
teacher.

"First word Sir is...."
I wait for it...wait for it.

"Beb seni çok seviyorum!"
he beams up at me.

I am overwhelmed.
"But...but...that's more than one word!""

"I say it Sir for it is true...it means
I love you very much!"

He is a hard task master.
I wrestle the words.

"Yavaş yavaş!" he exhorts me
"Slowly...slowly!"

We are putting on a Macbeth
and  the Spice Girl Witches

sing to Macbeth
"Orada dur ... çok teşekkür ederim!"

Macbeth looks startled to be
addressed in Turkish.

"Stop right now..thank you very much!"
the little witches sing into their hairbrushes!

"I'll tell you what you want...what you really really want.
...you want to be Kingy thingy Kingy thingy !"

Erdoğan bows to me
pleased with my progress

"See Sir....coming along you are
but slowly  - very very slowly!"

"ÇOK TEŞEKKÜR EDERİM!"
("THANK YOU VERY MUCH!")



Erdoğan "hasn't got
much the English!"


I am his "Sir!" and
he watches my mouth move


but the English so he says
as I watch him wrestle the words


"Gets stuck in the teeth is not
reaching the ears!"


He kisses my hand and
touches it to his forehead.


I try to turn the tables
put myself in his  position.


"Erdoğan teach me
one Turkish word a day!"


He is overjoyed to teach
teacher.


"First word Sir is...."
I wait for it...wait for it.


"Beb seni çok seviyorum!"
he beams up at me.


I am overwhelmed.
"But...but...that's more than one word!""


"I say it Sir for it is true...it means
I love you very much!"


He is a hard task master.
I wrestle the words.


"Yavaş yavaş!" he exhorts me
"Slowly...slowly!"


We are putting on a Macbeth
and  the Spice Girl Witches


sing to Macbeth
"Orada dur ... çok teşekkür ederim!"


Macbeth looks startled to be
addressed in Turkish.


"Stop right now..thank you very much!"
the little witches sing into their hairbrushes!


"I'll tell you what you want...what you really really want.
...you want to be Kingy thingy Kingy thingy !"


Erdoğan bows to me
pleased with my progress


"See Sir....coming along you are
but slowly  - very very slowly!"



*


It was the height of the Spice Girl's "girllllll power!" so I had to incorporate their phenomenon somehow! A Spice Girl Shakespeare. The inspectors descended upon us like locusts to our learning but were highly impressed that I was prepared to bring Shakespeare to the Primary masses( it wasn't the done thing then)and  with such a unique vigour and style and enthusiam" and that de kids were so deep into it.


And for the Turkish students who had hardly a word of English there was even a smattering of sir's awkward learning scattered here and there.



I shall always hear Erdoğan patient if exasperated voice saying again and again " No Sir...you are not listening...eat it with the ears...whisper it with the mouth!" He couldn't believe I couldn't get things. "But you are my Sir...surely you must know!" I had to tell him I was a very "Yavaş yavaş!" person. But he would just beam at me too and be proud that I tried.
"Never...never can you let me down...you are my Sir...but you are one very slow slow person to teach!" At least now I knew how difficult it was to him. And he had to deal with an Irish accent! He told me that "Always you have fun in your voice...it dances always!"


Another little girl drew a drawing of me with a crown perched amongst my curls. "Why the crown?" I asked. "Oh sir..." she smiled as if the answer was as simple as 2+2( which for her it wasn't)" Don't you know....you are the King of all the nice peoples."
This split year class of Year3/4 with 34 in the class and half of them statemented was my constant delight. A shining moment in my teaching experience....this is why we teach...to be taught ourselves by the honesty and openness of kids such as these.

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         From Shakespeare: My Spirit is Thine

                              Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 74

                      No kinsman could offer comfort there,
                      To a soul left drowning in desolation.

                      -“The Seafarer,” trans. Burton Raffel

When we die, our little things disappear:
Hairbrushes and pocketknives, fountain pens
Car keys, spare change, books, clothes, unopened mail
A souvenir coffee cup from Canada

An old uniform, a pistol from the war
A clock, a crucifix, Topsider shoes
Family pictures, a graduation ring
A magnifying glass, a radio

Bits and bobs, all sorts of trivial stuff
And a poem for you – it’s not enough

The girl I used to love (and still might just a little), how do I even begin to describe her? I met her when I was 11 or maybe even 12, an age where I was so bitter and angry that when she approached, heart on her sleeve, hands reaching out with friendship all I could do was recoil and spit venom at her.

With most people, they would have seen the violence in my eyes and given me up as a lost cause but somehow you must have seen something else because you never stopped approaching me with nothing but compassion in your eyes. Sometimes I wish you would have stayed away, maybe I wouldn't have hurt you then.

At a speed I could not have anticipated you became my best friend, not that I would have ever admitted it to myself, and I would go to you with girl problems and I never noticed that even then I was hurting you.

And then we fell in love, and that was the beginning of the end for me, everything revolved around you, I swear that it was like gravity shifted and I was caught in your orbit. I don't know if you ever felt like I loved you less than you did me, but it's not true.

I loved you with everything in me, in spite of everything in me. I swear it was like I was drowning, the way I loved you felt like I was always on the cusp of imploding.

It was violent and my heart tore at my chest to offer itself unto you. When we kissed my skin felt like bursting into flames and lightning charred the inside of my veins and I was lost, lost, lost in you.

I loved you so, which is why I couldn't keep going, I burnt out, I couldn’t keep up. I made you unattainable when I already had you.

But I was losing myself and I couldn't afford to.

But the worst part, is that it wasn't always passion and burning.

The moments I miss more are the ones where you would become unbearably human.

Memories of sitting on your feet because you thought your toes would fall off. Memories of shampoo in my eyes that you would tenderly wipe away.

Of gel and hairbrushes and your capable hands taming these wild curls. Of snow days spent watching movies. of handholding that would light up my soul.

Of drawings that you would make of the two of us.

(I wonder if you make them for him)

Of gentle singing when you were focused. Of earth-shattering worship that would bring down the Kingdom. Of tight sock buns and even tighter hugs. Of front lawn conversations in the dark.

Of slow dancing, of learning how to dance because I wanted you to have a partner in me. We fit, you made me feel needed in a way I craved, I was ready to give up everything for you.

Suffice to say, I miss you. Today more than others. And I'll probably never stop loving you in some capacity, you were my first love, but I hope you aren't my last.