So I just read somewhere that chalkboard paint is "out," but we went ahead and put it up anyway and we're glad of it, fashion be darned. Today is a snow day and so I decided to add the elephant from the cover of my copy of A Passage to India. I made sure to draw him high on the wall so the kids' puerile scratchings don't mar him immediately.I mean look at the spelling here, really. Four bars on a capital "E"? I hope she writes them that way for the rest of her life.

The Game of Life

I had an idea today to make a game to play while you are just walking around, living, or whatever, and you would get or lose points for things things that you saw or that happened to you.

So far, the only rule I've thought of is "see a dog in a car: 5 pts."


Right now, my score is 5.

EDIT:

Possible snow: 2 pts.

Jame's Wright's "The Jewel," a surprise paint-job on my car by a student in the school parking lot this morning. The snow got to it before I could get home, though, a bummer; I wanted to drive Wright around town for a bit see if anyone read him at stoplights.

On the driver-side, another student's copy of Li Po's "High in the Mountains, I Fail to Find the Wise Man" (in blue paint) fared even worse. Li Po would have laughed at the thought of the snow erasing his poetry, probably, but then, Li Po would probably be drunk, and likely to laugh at lots of things.

Here is the first poem, to rescue it from the hoary eraser:

The Jewel

There is this cave
In the air behind my body
That nobody is going to touch:
A cloister, a silence
Closing around a blossom of fire.
When I stand upright in the wind
My bones turn to dark emeralds.

--James Wright

The Li Po is awesome, too, but I can't find a cut and past version online. Maybe I'll tap it out later.