Advice to Myself -

Wednesday,  I took a fancy to Louise Erdich and brought "Advice to Myself" to the attention to my 11th and 12th grade class along with my 8th grade class. 

Advice to Myself
Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.


I noticed that my 8th graders were the ones clinging to the words of the poems and really thinking about being authentic, being real - where my older students  - I had to rattle their cage and ask them the old age question if they were "Duds or Studs of Learning"? +

And then, yesterday, my eighth grade girls came rushing into class and told me to turn on the youtube video of  "Girl on Fire" by  Alicia Keys.



It was one of those moments - when I knew just knew I had the best job in the world...  and then, sang the song to every kid I saw in the hallway.