yet another week has gone by

but at least i have some ideas...

-for one, i have this concept of marital depression that i want to write an essay about... here i am going to liken two partners to two TV channels... you are one channel, your partner is the other. your compatibility depends upon your ability to be "on the same page" or same channel, so to speak. because what happens in marriage is that in many ways, at least during their time together, people's lives are merged. and when they're apart, ideally they would be doing/thinking things that the other is interested in because often that's what they end up talking about.

so my idea is that with marital depression, you are being pulled in directions you don't want to be pulled in, almost like an internal conflict that could cause "depression," only in this case you have on control over the other person. you try to communicate, hope things can be resolved without screaming and shouting because then you're really in pain.

but there's also the pain of silence, of keeping quiet. imagine, for example, that you have some liberal leanings, but let's say your partner is fox news. when you married fox news, it was the only show it town. maybe you hadn't even developed your liberal leanings yet because you'd only been with your partner, and you'd only watched fox news. but then, for some reason--maybe you read an article, or you talked to some other people, you learned about liberal ideas. maybe you tried to ask your partner to change their format, but they couldn't. you tried to expose them to your influences, but they refused. and then, maybe just briefly you were channel surfing. you weren't intending to land on any other channels, but let's just say that you caught a glimpse of cnn or pbs. before, you didn't know they existed, and now you don't know what you would do without them. you go home, and it's fox, fox, fox praising, praising, praising sarah palin. you wish you could change the situation. you don't want screaming and yelling. you try what you can, and then finally you might just decide to get your own place so you can watch cnn or pbs. makes sense to me. so that's one idea.

the other idea is about how best to run a classroom. when i was teaching spanish, some days i felt really happy, and i thought the only other thing i'd rather do than this is make movies. i mean the great thing about teaching is that it is live. so that's kind of like movies only better (except of course if you were making them, and then you could actually show them to the people, maybe get an award because people watched and appreciated your best work, and maybe there would even be financial rewards. that would be some perks you don't necessarily get teaching). but anyways, as i need money and like working with people and the stuff i teach, i stay teaching instead of making movies right now, but i still feel that i deserve the respect of film-maker because while i don't have film-making experience i have other valuable experience, and anyways, you get the idea.

so the idea is that on my syllabus, course intro, course ethos, whatever, i call my classroom a film studio. i am the director (because i have to decide what our purpose is every day, or at least set the scene, and i do have student loans to pay for the experience that got me the position), and the students are the actors... sometimes the crew. they all have to take part. and they all have speaking roles. no one is necessarily the star, though sometimes people do have leading roles here and there. i don't want to have to fire anyone for not doing their job, as we all have to go home with good news at the end of the day, but of course there is no sleeping on the job, and you can't talk on-set with other people while we're in the midst of making a scene. this is live theatre, after all. if they come with the attitudes that they'll be engaged in my plans, we can have an amazing range of experiences. maybe if they're really good, we'll even get them on film. and if the students learn my ways, i'm all for teaching apprentices anything i know how to do, and i also welcome new ideas.

those are my main ideas for the day. to get a phd in creative writing, you can put together a book of essays. i plan to do that. i've been wanting to write a book or essay or something called "notes from a sub" (as a substitute teacher, not sub-human as some kids would love to pronounce)... so there is some gift in subbing... the different experiences i have in different places do become interesting should i choose to start recording them and shaping them in writing somehow... also, it just really expands my teaching/directorial/acting repertoire to be placed at random in so many scenes.

there was one more idea, but it's hiding, so we'll have to wait.