Sheer Pottery II

Poor fool, I
To throw my soul upon the beach
Beyond reach of the waves,
To look hope into the sky
And get blue in my eyes.

Why catch fireflies?
They only glow, and die away
Cold and green and a little weird.
Best not to jar them.
Leave them starring the night,
Black and cold and a little weird,
Distant as the fixed stars,
Frigid as the moon.

Poor fool, I
Following footsteps out the door
And across the grass,
To look dark into the sky
And get stars in my eyes.

Sheer Pottery I

Enchanted moon,
I should have known that very soon
You and I would be no more.
No bond between us, no one had seen us
Dance beneath the old enchanted moon.

Enchanted moon,
Lighting up the rain, never hinting of the pain
Filling up the days and weeks like water in the lakes and creeks
Illumined by the old enchanted moon.

Enchanted moon
Hanging in the sky forlorn
I realized when I cried alone
In the southwest sky sits a cold white stone
In place of the old enchanted moon.

Jesus and The Joint Commission

I work at a state mental hospital, which means that we are chronically underfunded, short of staff and behind the state of the art. I am in the medical records department, known as Health Information Management, apparently to throw people off. (This is, though, an industry-wide title.) At the moment, the requirements by The Joint Commission (formerly known as the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Health Care Organizations) for monitoring of medical records has become so onerous that it is increasingly difficult for the traditional, routine and necessary work of the medical records department to be done efficiently and on time. There is simply not enough staff or time for both horribly complicated and arcane businesses to be done by this one department. The atmosphere is increasingly desperate, proportionate to the desperation of the situation, and it seems that the only solution hoped for by now is that Jesus Christ will come back before things become impossible.

There is a parking space in front of our building which reads, "Reserved for HIM." One day, my dad brought me back from lunch, and asked, "reserved for him? Who's he?" I told my dad that most of the people I worked with were true believers and thought that He would be coming back any minute. Apparently. He would be needing a spot to park His SUV.

One can only hope Gabriel's trumpet sounds before TJC's does.

What I Learned In School

One of the most important things I learned in school, and one that it took all the way through elementary school to get through my head, was not to get ahead. Reading ahead in the book to learn what was coming next was strictly forbidden. Even next week's arithmetic problems and spelling words were dangerous territory. Pages or chapters were assigned, and the end of the assignment meant you stopped there, or else.

Even more of a horror was to learn things that weren't even part of the curriculum for theentire school year. This was a major problem for me, with my sister who was over a year older than I was, and who was a year, and, later, two years ahead of me in school. The problem with my sister was that she liked to teach me what she knew, presumably so we'd both know it. I enjoyed learning what she knew and soaked it up as fast as she could put it out there. I'm told she taught herself to read at the age of three, and taught me when I was no older than four. This caused me no end of problems when I was supposed to have been learning to read and would rather have been reading, which was not on the agenda.

I was very proud of what I knew for the first several years, and I didn't know any better than to march right into the classroom and demonstrate my new knowledge for all to see. The connection between said demonstrations and the time I spent sitting on the bench in the hallway of my elementary school remains vague to me, even now.

Another thing I learned in school was that my word was good for absolutely nothing, especially in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, such as the statement of a peer. This lesson was learned early and painfully, as part of the general "Life is not fair" lesson that I'm still trying without success to find a way around.

Having moved some six hundred miles away from my parents' hometown and all our relatives, I did not see much of my grandparents, and I felt this lack keenly as a child. One year at Christmas, my mother's parents drove down and stayed for several days, bringing what in memory seem to be some rather odd Christmas presents. Anything from my beloved relatives was a treasure, however, and when I found that a missing pencil I had received from my grandparents had turned up in the possession of some kid in my class, I knew that I had to have it back. I pointed out to the teacher that the kid had my pencil, which in retrospect must not have seemed like such a big deal to her. I was not at all articulate and unable to express the overwhelming feelings I had at times; much less to make rational, Perry Mason-like legal arguments back in those days, and I can't recall what I said to the teacher; but she was not impressed. The kid, for whatever reason, claimed the pencil as his. "He says it's his," the teacher said, and that was the end of that. It was useless, had I done it, to point out that the pencil in question was gaily decorated with red, white and blue elephants and the legend, "McLean County Republican Committee," and that Alabama has no McLean County. My gift had left my possession forever.

This lesson has been reinforced again and again, as my best arguments and my most logical reasoning have been put forth against the flimsiest of excuses for withholding from me what I have earned. It doesn't matter what I say, what evidence I have, what obvious lies have been set against me. "It's the pencil all over again," I think.