It was supposed to snow last night, but it hasn’t. I haven’t turned the heat back on. I am in some discomfort this morning from a sinus headache that is out of control, it’s been getting worse on a slow simmer since Sunday. I actually took an Alegra a few minutes ago (which is something I never do) and we’ll see if that helps the pressure in my right ear. Work was fun yesterday, Leland is well educated, so as I was training him I explained our systems in terms of Descartes’ view of the history of philosophy: an architectural mish mash where styles of incongruous periods are built on top of each other out of necessity. This system is being phased out and replaced by this system, but which system you use is context dependant. Leland said, “It’s just like people, we only change when we have to.” Leland was a social worker in a former life.

Bowling was fun, but we lost all four games by slight margins. Eric’s wife Tam joined us for a bit, and we got on quite well with the other team. The Saratoga is the oldest bowling alley this side of the Mississippi and the gutters are original to the 1913 construction. It was remodeled in the 1950’s, but not substantially since. We’re still on manual scoring. The jukebox is new however, very new, new last night. It looks like a standard jukebox from either side, but it has a touch screen like a mega-touch game. It is hooked up via dsl to a server and you can then select nearly any song ever recorded via the dsl connection. Progress as promised.

We decide we had the energy to go out after bowling so we tried the Hipoint. There was what can only be called a thrash metal band, and it was a very young crowd, on to the loop. Too early for The Delmar, Riddle’s was closed, Blue Berry Hill seemed dead so Cicero’s. Wow this headache is overpowering me and I don’t have any other drugs to take – right behind the eyes with sinus pressure. I’ll have to write more later as right now I need drugs. Found drugs – when Erin was sick a few months ago I walked down to the grocery and bought her Alka-Seltzer (which has survived the departure, good it was expensive)– my old standby. In more honest days Alka-Seltzer’s advertising slogan was, “feel better than you should.”

So, Cicero’s and I have a revised relationship. When R and I first moved here we had a terrible meal there, which made me physically ill – this was several years ago – and I haven’t been there since. There was a great Ska band, there was no cover, Guiness on Tap (20 beers or more on tap) – what more could you want? Opinion revised. Also, just a point of observation. It is the general rule at St. Louis bars, and perhaps bars in general, that the men outnumber the women by margins as high as two to one. This is not true at Cicero’s, where the reverse is in play. There are an infinite number of reasons to go to a bar, but flirting is high on the list. Vanessa had three boys on the line over at the Saratoga until the drunk twenty first birthday crew arrived in stiletto heals and falling down halter tops. Tam asked if they were hookers. You get that at the Saratoga post ten pm. I took my parents there a few months ago and that crowd was coming in just as we finished bowling. My mom asked Angela, “are those hookers?” ha ha ha ha ha. Ah mapleweird, maplehood, sing me a song of the far gone days of Maplewood, when the trolley ran to this outlying suburb and there were actually trees here.

So at Cicero’s we ran into a former student of mine from Meramec who has been trying to track me down. We had done some counseling after she had come to my class clearly on something. She confessed to using cocaine, but the added wrinkle was that her husband was her dealer. I walked her down to counseling after we had talked for a long time, there were no counselors there as they were having a training day, I insisted that they get someone down there who was qualified to meet with her and they sent a librarian with a background in counseling. What good is a counseling service if there is no one there to counsel when people are ready to make a change in their lives? Anyway, she stuck with the counseling, left her husband, got her own place and now makes a living running several daycare centers.

She gave me a talking to about the change in her life that began with that class. Karl get back in the classroom – the universe seemed to scream at the top of its lungs. Hannah and Vanessa agreed. My calling is to teach and to support people. I support a large circle of friends (and am supported by them in turn). I support a great many people at the HAC and wonder how it would run without me, but it would, just as it did for years and years before I came there. I should hear back from my January round of applications by the end of March or early April. I’ve applied for three teaching positions at local colleges and I’ve met with the Dean of Humanities for one of the institutions. It’s competitive to be sure, but I’m in the running.

It’s a chicken and egg argument Leland; “have to make a change” and “want to make a change” both get you change, and who can say which comes first. Though as Heraclitus aptly observed, “you can’t step in the same river twice.” So even if you don’t want change, change wants you. And as David Bowie in the guise of Ziggy Stardust observed, “Time may change me, but I can’t change time.” So we are powerless to stop our inevitable transformations and evolutions in time. What’s next universe? Next you put out the dog, feed the fish, and go to work, just like you did yesterday (in an ongoing and habitual reproduction of the past). Hahahahahha it’s a gyre dam it, a gyre!