A Poetic Bookkeeper?

“Wanted: A Poetic Bookkeeper Who Can Be an Inspirational Muse and Balance My Checkbook”

Nathaniel Hawthorne, American, Romantic writer extraordinaire, astutely noted that, “No man can be a poet and a bookkeeper at the same time,” and today, as I struggle with balancing responsibilities for career and home, while still maintaining a rich
enough personal life to combat my own personal ennui, it resonates especially. Writers such as Hawthorne, Gertrude Stein, and others have continually strived to satisfy the inner conflict of being true to their artistic genius, while still paying tribute to the gods of the mundane; paying bills, feeding and housing children, and taking care of the responsibilities of everyday life must be addressed, paying no matter to whether these actions can or do inspire enlightenment or personal satisfaction. It might not be a dirty job, but everyone has to do it.
So, the question does beg to be answered: how does a person who has a mammoth load of responsibility to everyday life still keep a semblance of a life that gives personal happiness in order to be able to keep up with the everyday with an awareness of vision that keeps in sight the pleasures that let us “take care of business” with aplomb? A possible answer might be to go into a “survival” mode, where only the basic necessities of things are taken care of, and others fall to the wayside as one finds time to enjoy the simple and beautiful things in life. This might only provide a fleeting satisfaction, as the dirty dishes on the counter pile higher, and the living of a “Bohemian” lifestyle includes visions of people living in boxes, but reading to their hearts’ content. A heart’s content should always make room for the arts and for paying mortgage payments.
This, however, is easier said than done for people like me who value doing a job well done because the same fire for otium—time spent in leisure to pursue one’s interests and happiness—is the same fire that ensures lessons for school are done, that bills are paid promptly, and that the house is vacuumed well enough to not have guests gossip about the upkeep of the house once they leave it.
Maybe all a person can hope for is an uneasy balance between the seeking of pleasures and the keeping of regular responsibilities. That there might be a new term created by the person herself who lets work responsibilities dominate one weekend, while another weekend is dominated by the museum, or by books who speak of a beloved writer or artist. That part of this uneasy balance is an acknowledgement to the fact that the marrying of these two things will never run smoothly. But the course of poets and bookkeepers never do.

It's the Little Things, Grammatically Speaking

The teacher struggle within me starts making itself known, as one of my freshman girls talks excitedly about any of the many things freshman girls get excited about to the point where their voices are raised to a preternatural pitch that even dogs cannot hear. As she giggles endearingly, she ends her conversation with "anyways." I can no longer keep my red-inked tongue from staying its course: "K..., 'anyways' is not a word; however 'anyway' is." She takes it in stride, and now, anytime she says "anyway," she says it loudly enough to catch my attention, with a sly and knowing look on her face. It's become an inside joke with her and her friends, and not least importantly, me. One small step for K, and one giant step for helping save the English language, one student at a time.

Being a teacher in today's changing climate of education, where one must always take into account the political movements sweeping the region of the country in which one lives, is a tricky business, indeed. Issues of immigration, political sensitivity, educational institutions moving towards an insidious notion of a "customer service" industry rather than an educational industry, and educational and political leaders not acknowledging the tough issue of discipline within the school system are all issues that impact the teacher in the "trenches." And it is that reason why teachers are trying persistently to instill a love, knowledge, and respect for the content they teach to their students. It becomes ever more sacred, as traditional notions of what education should be fall to the wayside.

And even though as a teacher, I might fall sway sometimes to the idea of "correcting equals hurt feelings," I still correct gently because I hold reverence to a language that enables its speakers to use a vast array of words in a dizzying multitude of ways just to express one clear thought. And the speakers that are in today's classrooms should understand and acknowledge that grammar, vocabulary, and syntax are all tools one needs in order to shape roughly hewn ideas, lingering in shells, into liberated pearls of wisdom.

I fancy myself an English commando, as I maneuver my students through the tricky labrynthine mazes of "good" vs. "well." I see them stealthily climb over the walls of "their," "they're," and "there." I watch with pride as my freshmen can recite the differences among homonyms, synonyms, and antonyms. I feel the impact that I make, and not the impact that the educational tides have on me, as I watch my students correct themselves over something I've taught when speaking to me. And, when I go home at the end of the evening, I know that I have done not good, but well. Grammatically speaking.