The 300?

I wanted to do something big and nutty for my 300th post--you know, a contest or some sort of deeply introspective and brilliantly pondering work that would make the bells of humanity tone foreverandevermore amen.

But really? I'm not in that sort of mood. About the only thing I have to report is that I'm not a total mean-assed wank-bitch, as I thought I might be.

You know that phrase, "I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy?" Well, it turns out that I apparently am very sincere about it. It seems the grand royal prickweenie is sick--he's been sick on and off for a year, and instead of handing his post to someone else for a while, or staying at home and getting better, he has invested his energy in what we have come to term "Seagull management"--you know, when someone comes in, makes a lot of noise, craps all over you, and then leaves? (My husband got the phrase from Intel, but it applies here.) And for the most part, I looked forward to Prickweenie's hiatuses from work with a sort of mingled relief...I mean, I was glad he was gone, but not so happy that he had to be in excruciating pain to go away. And today, as a colleague who works closely with the Prickweenie described his symptoms, I had a moment of conflict. "Yay--he's going to be gone for the next month...wait...wait...ugh. NO. Not happy. Truly." It was an epiphany--I had nothing but negative feelings aimed at this person for so very long that I hadn't really thought well enough of myself to quite believe it. But it's true. I REALLY WOULDN'T WISH PAIN AND SUFFERING ON MY WORST ENEMY. Shit. What kind of bad-ass am I? I can't even bring myself to make a good karma/bad karma platitude. I just feel for the guy, period, the end. Well Peace on Earth and Goodwill towards Prickweenies--I'm not a bitch and he's not Satan and where the hell are we now?

I'll tell you where we are--we're in a world where two kids who were supposed to be friends are, in a flash, ready to throw down for real because one of them grabbed my car keys and pretended to throw down in fun. We're in a world where my best kids are my worst talkers, my smartest kids have the worst grades, and the things I think are the most important to teach are the things that I'm supposed to ignore because I can't quantify them.

I'm teaching in California--I'm obviously in hell.

Except when I"m writing. When I'm writing, the world makes sense--when I'm blogging, I'm not a bad person. When I'm crafting fiction, there is a circular and harmonic resonance in the world that reality seems to lack--I've always said I've seen the divine in fiction: there are patterns we put in there, both on purpose and coincidentally that give order to the text, and it seems as though if we, as flawed humans, can do that in writing, then a cosmic consciousness would have no problem doing that in the world as a whole.

I sometimes ask myself if I shouldn't give up writing--blogging, fiction, whatever. I ask myself if the cost to my family and my career aren't too great to bear. But today, when blogging, I realized I wasn't a bad person (well, not entirely, anyway.) And John Gardner didn't call the poet a 'bard' or a 'scops' in Grendel--he called him a 'shaper', because his sounds shaped the world.

So maybe there's something sublime to say in my 300th post after all. Maybe all this introspective crap has been my winding consciousness finding its way to something I suspect you all knew.

300 is not such a big number after all. I can talk WAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY more than this.

Manana!