Time Before and After

Posted by Joe Deegan (Waterville, ME, United States) on 25 August 2008 in Cityscape & Urban.

This is a primary school near my apartment building. It's not the one I will be working at, but looks similar.

My first day at school was a bit overwhelming, even though students will not arrive until Monday. I took the bus with Lucia this morning. The stop is right by my apartment building. After a 10 minute ride, we were let off, and walked down a side street, then up a hill and through some more old communist-style buildings which seemed haphazardly placed . In between two of them was a children’s playground. I saw a sandbox for the first time in years. There was also a very old cemetery nearby. I spotted a sunken mausoleum and several mossy stones in rows like gray teeth. A cruciform stone stood crookedly. “Spooky place,” Lucia said. She explained that she had played there as a child. The school where I will be teaching— where we will be teaching— was her school.

It was then, really, that I was struck with just how temporary my presence here is. I will learn a bit of the language, eat the food here, drink the water. I will try to help the teachers decode the English language for their classes. I will make friends, and share with them a bit of what America is like. But, to invoke the sophomoric cliche, what does it amount to in the end? What is one year to a lifetime?

I cannot help but turn my thoughts to my family and my friends: those last parties, final dinners, final moments in the airport. We all felt this need to make time stretch, to prolong the minutes and hours before I left. I sat with them, ate with them, drank with them, smoked cigars with them. Together we anticipated the sting of separation. But why? In an instant, it will be over. Perhaps we did those things because somehow, we all know that this journey I have chosen is about more than just relocating to a new place. It signals a deeper change in my life, one that has been germinating for a while now. I have become a person somewhat comfortable giving myself over to auncertainty.

I am still working on the how and why that made this change possible. I do know one thing. Some lines from Bukowski resonated last night. I hope I am not sued for sharing them. From a poem entitled “the crunch (2)”:

we don’t need new governments
new revolutions
we don’t need new men
new women
we don’t need new ways
we just need to care.

what we need is less false education
what we need are fewer rules
fewer police
and more good teachers.

I hope I can be a good teacher for my students. Photos of the school and surroundings to come.

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