Month: December 2024

12/10/24

SaschaLeave a comment

I worked with one of my favorite students this week. A gifted young woman who I have worked with over the past two years. What an absolute privilege to witness a young person find their voice, to watch their confidence blossom and know that you played a small part in fostering an environment where it can happen.

This young woman is the type of person so many of us were at that age – passionate, driven, moving through the world without the cynicism and bitterness that come with age and experience, determined to do her part to make the world a better place than the one her generation arrived in.

She’s writing an essay on reproductive rights. This is the second one I’ve read from her on the same subject this semester. We have enough of a rapport that at one point cracked a joke:

“So, this is like your whole deal, huh?”

“Yep!”

Not a moment’s hesitation or even a hint of backing down.

It was perfect.

We fixed her citations. Then moved on to revising some of her word choices because, yeah. Saying “abortion rights arouses controversy” is just a little awkward, kid. But sometimes writing is like that. You struggle to find the perfect word. The one that lingers just at the edge of your perception and then you find it, like the puzzle piece you’ve been looking for all day and everything fits and the world makes sense. You laugh at yourself for not finding it sooner and move on.


At the end of the session, I reiterated that I was looking at some truly strong writing and encouraged her to keep at it.

Teaching is such a gift. One of the greatest joys of my life. All I really want to do is write, teach, lift weights and scream in a punk band until it’s time to do something else.

I just wish survival wasn’t so hard, especially when it doesn’t have to be. This week, I’m balancing work with the throbbing ache of a tooth abscess that needs a root canal, a car that shit the bed on the highway during my long commute home, and rent I can barely cover. For the most part, I live a happy and full life. I love my work, my friends, my home, I have the partner I’ve always wanted, but the stress remains.

All my co-workers are stressed about money, about making ends meet. We spend a disproportionate amount of time talking about it when students aren’t in the room. Everyone is terrified of what the incoming administration is going to bring. Cuts to funding? “Anti-woke” foolishness that could affect how we can talk to students when discussing the topics THEY CHOOSE to write about? Is fucking ICE going to come to campus looking for our migrant and refugee students?

And I get it. That collective outpouring of rage and animosity towards corporate America this week? I get it. That collective lack of empathy for a wealthy man whose decisions and policies who caused untold suffering murdered in the street? I get it. Those pearl clutching, hand wringing, spineless servants of the ruling class in the media can talk about signs of moral decay all they want, but I get it.

I know my worth. I know what my co-workers and colleagues are worth. I know what my mentors are worth. More than anything, I know what our students are worth. You’ll never convince me that their hopes, their dreams, their right to a free and happy and healthy life are worth more than the whims they of some soulless billionaire who exploited countless living, breathing humans to achieve their undeserved power and hoarded wealth.

Elon Musk can eat shit and die.

I only hope I live to see the ruling class tremble before our collective fury, before they starve like the parasites they are.

10/6/24

SaschaLeave a comment

I don’t know how to write about anything. I don’t even know who reads this shit. Who even blogs anymore? I don’t know how to put the last few months into words. They’ve been some of the hardest, and most powerful of my life. It’s not like it’s been smooth sailing this year, what with that whole pesky rising authoritarianism and all, but we were doing alright.

Then September hit. We lost a friend. Then the storm came.

10/6/24

I still don’t know how to process it. My home will never be the same again. Nothing will ever be the same again. Every time I look at my oldest pair of Docs, I will remember: pacing around my house all night the night of the storm, waiting. Waiting for the rumble of a mudslide, the crack and crash of a tree falling through the roof. Pulling them on to run out the door as a tense gray dawn broke over the valley through clouds still heavy with rain. Scrambling through ankle deep with neighbors who were once strangers, who I will now forever call friend, to check on our other neighbors. The smell of propane tanks ruptured by rushing floodwaters. Racing back up the hill in fear of an errant spark. The sound of my partner Bex’s panicked voice on the phone. A moment of confusion, trying to comprehend their words over the roar in my ears, wondering if I had raced into the storm too soon, before realizing it was the thunder rumble of adrenaline.

Adrenaline that kept me upright for two days. Trapped on the mountain with dwindling food and water. Filthy. Sweating in the cruel heat of a summer stretched by climate change. Pacing. Waiting for word from friends, from chosen family. Trying to remember if Bex had enough insulin or not. Clawing through the woods with my neighbor, trying to help them find a neighbor overdosing on fentanyl. Slicing my leg open on barbed wire. Trying to keep the cut clean by dousing it with rubbing alcohol in the dark. What it felt like to see Crain and Bex Sunday morning, after they braved 40 miles of ruined roads, swerving a borrowed car around downed power lines and sink holes. The news tricking in about the sheer scope of the devastation, that entire towns in Western North Carolina were gone.

All my nearest and dearest made it through the storm, but each of us knows someone who lost someone. The cold and indifferent hand of death might not have reached down for us, but it touched us all the same

You can smell it in the air down here by the river, the mold blooming in the dust, the acrid smell of industry in the air. Nothing will ever be the same. You can see it in the shell shocked eyes of strangers. You can feel it in the warmth of outstretched hands.

Nothing will ever be the same.