"I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing."
Flannery O'Connor from "The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor"
When I got home tonight from work, even though it was just after five, it was already dark. I turned off my radio when another numbingly facile Republican refused to answer some questions and spouted a lot of — well — bullshit. There was a pile of boxes outside my house, most of them supplies for Sophie, but there were two things that I’d ordered: a huge box of organic California dates and a small box of assorted caramels (my god the Earl Grey ones are sublime) from a small business. Both treats for me, following the delicious box of artisan chocolates I’d ordered some weeks ago from an artist. I dole each of those out and rarely share. Am I self-indulgent? Why, yes, I am. Do I go on regular trips overnight? No, I do not. Have I taken a vacation since 2019? No, I have not. So, dates, caramels, chocolates. I’ll buy some for you, though. Just let me know.
I spoke with my first artificial intelligence assistant tonight at CVS, and if there’s anything more frustrating than a robotic automated pharmacy prescription voice, it’s an AI voice. However smooth and silky and real, she couldn’t pronounce the name of ONFI (ON-FEE) and got mixed up so I got mixed up and we had a bit of a clusterfuck together that caused me to shout the words prescription! Onfi! and ultimately necessitated me hanging up on her and calling back. Things went smoothly after that, and now I’m waiting for the follow-up text that will necessitate my intervention with a human at the CVS or a doctor (the real doctor, Nice Neurologist). Everything feels so dumb.
Every day, all day, I deal with students using AI, and if I wanted to, I would tell you my thoughts about it all, but I wouldn’t be able to stop. I miss the brains of old, our brains of old and wish I could somehow pack these new young brains, these brains whose architecture is changing, with ballast — something sound and real and slow. I wish I could pack these brains with flowers unfurling before they (the brains) fuse forever, the tender bones closing over anxiety and overstimulation and mindless clicking and scrolling and sending. The voices of AI. Even the word resonant such a beautiful word ruined by robots.
I miss my Norton Anthology of English, my grammar book, my dictionary and thesaurus, an index in the back, wondering whether something was accidentally forgotten in the index because I just can’t find it, putting things in alphabetical order on shelves and looking for things, slowly, in a card catalog. Some of my fellow teachers, decades younger than I, are trying to deal with what I, an oldster, call cheating, and they call the future, are using more paper with their students who report that they like it. They like the feeling of the mind, connected to the hand, connected to the pencil or pen, connected to the paper that sits open on the table. It feels good, they say. It helps me be calm.
What I’m reading:
The Confessions of St. Augustine
Bread of Angels by Patti Smith
Flashlight by Susan Choi
What I’ve read recently:
All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert
Flesh by David Szalay
Emma by Jane Austen
Perfume by Patrick Süskind
Heart the Lover by Lily King
My kids are 15 and 18, and have visceral responses to the amount of screen time they're required to engage in for schoolwork. My son flat-out refuses to use online calendars to organize his chaos. Even if the kids aren't able to rebel, something about many of their psyches is.
Love that idea, gifting their brains with ballast. Like a heart grounded but not weighted 💙
What Earl Grey are you drinking? I need some new sparkle in my cup, and I've been sharing a daily teatime ritual with one of the other teachers at my school so that we don't go insane with Everything That's Going On.
We are also using more paper and reading more books. The students do, in fact, say that they like it.