poem by alastair reid

I do like that my job affords me opportunity to read poetry while supervising students in the computer lab:

Curiosity
may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die--only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.
Only the curious
have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

my 9th-grade self tells all

Oh, get ready: I was reading my 9th-grade journal today, and I found these gems:

"The good thing about family parties is Mom buys you a lot of presents since your friends don't come."
"The quality I like about myself is my ability to get along well with other people."
"I'll tell you one thing, if I was a teacher students would like to come to school so much, there would be no absences."

Out of a list of things I would do with unlimited money:
"give money to the government to get it out of debt (even though there may not be enough money in the world to do that)." "I would buy someone to teach me every little thing and I would become the smartest person in the world."

"Today so far has been a pretty boring day. Things have gone so smoothly and so according to routine that I'm just a little bored, but hopefully things will get a little more interesting."
"I guess you could say I have a taste for situational irony."

After my Dad came back from Europe:
"You know, he said 'you expect lazanya [I love my 9th-grade spelling!] to come from Italy, well they served some kind of ravioli.' We were all a little surprised."
"In Spain, he said he loved the paella (it's a favorite Spanish dish with rice, some sort of meat, and seafood). My Dad said he didn't bother to learn any Spanish: just paella."

About my 16th-birthday party:
"I want my party to be the biggest one ever! (I sure am planning ahead, I haven't even celebrated my 15th birthday yet!). I'm going to invite almost everyone I know."

"I think the Government is trying to give too much power to the States. This could lead to states wanting to become separate countries and perhaps start another civil war."

"I am trying to learn to write with my left hand, that way I can use both my left and right hand to write with, that way if one hand gets tired like mine is now, I can just switch to the other." [On this one, I even drew an arrow to "I can" and wrote "this is lefthanded (pretty bad, huh?)."]

"You also may know that my hand and arm are hurting pretty bad right now and I have a bad case of writer's cramp, but so far I've got almost 2 pages, and I'm going to keep going. I may never write again after this so I hope you appreciate it."

"I've never been much of a person to go to football games and things like that, I must confess, and it's simply because I just don't want to."

"Mrs. Grey, a lady who lived in a big white house whom I used to rake leaves for, died Sat. She was 97 years old, she was one of my favorite older people, she was sweet and serious."

"One thing that's been in the news is the death of Rabin, Israel's Prime Minister, and I am totally for sure that I will most definitely not be the only one writing about this."

And finally, an entry about George Washington:
"Oh, if 'ole Georgie could see how the government is being run today, he would probably faint at all the chaos, how more emphasis is put on who is getting elected than who in this world is getting killed by people who were getting life-imprisonment got to go free in a minimum of 7 years. I think he would be most concerned."

I'm so glad I still have this precious English journal. I'm going to go encourage my students to save the journal they're writing for me now!