Day 19. Tears and the Gnashing of Teeth. The Fall of A Day.

Today the students have unleashed something inside of me and it haunts me to my soul. The memories of betrayal stomp around inside my head like giant hideous maribou storks, maribou storks in heavy hobnailed boots. They leap from brain cell to brain cell crushing each as they land and befouling the synapses in between. I rue the day I left the world of oceanography, and the study of parasitic fishes (true story) and chose instead the parasitic wildlife of childhood. Even now I feel inside me the loss of my own soul that I have given so that they might have at least a morsel of one themselves.

And yet I believe there is goodness there as well. For even out of the foulest effluence, mushrooms or even orchids can grow. Although I water the garden of creativity, and if in return I reap a harvest of only thistles and voracious tobacco worms, surely I will not abandon my blooms. Even as they abandon me.

A new sun rises on Tuesday. The penumbra that peeks from the eclipse will light a new path and it will be the sheep of my flock that choose a path to pasture or to stony fields. Let them choose wisely.

(This is a maribou stork by the way for those too incurious to know this in advance.)